When he’s not busy writing and directing his own films or ruling his multi-media empire, Tyler Perry likes to pop up unexpectedly in genre films. We’ve seen him in Star Trek and he was used to great effect in Gone Girl. His next role will find him acting with those heroes in a half-shell as he’s joined the cast of **Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2.
Little is known about the plot or even how many of the actors who performed/voiced the heroes will return, but we do know that villains Bebop and Rocksteady will be causing trouble for the turtles. Megan Fox and Will Arnett are returning as April O’Neil and cameraman Vernon Fenwick, with model Alessandro Ambrosio as Vernon’s girlfriend and Stephen Amell as vigilante-turned-turtle pal Casey Jones.
Perry is on board as scientist Baxter Stockman, who in the original comics created machines called Mousers, designed to destroy sewer rats. He’s had several different encounters with the turtles, including robbing banks and encountering them in the sewers to seeing his devices appropriated by Shredder to help destroy Leonardo and co. And there have been storylines that see him turned into a cyborg, left stranded between dimensions and mutating into a fly, so we’ll have to find out which the new film picks from, or whether the character has a new origin story.
Dave Green is directing this time, working from a script by Josh Appelbaum and André Nemec, who penned the first movie. It’ll be out on June 3, 2016.