Mirage Studios to Close in 2010?

With the sale of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to Nickelodeon, will we see the end of Peter Laird’s Mirage Studios? Tristan Jones thinks we might!

Earlier this week, the following message was posted on Mirage’s website, ninjaturtles.com :

Howdy folks,

If you haven’t heard the news, Peter Laird has sold all intellectual property rights to the TMNT franchise to Nickelodeon. So Nick now owns the TMNT lock, stock and barrel. Of note, Peter did retain the right to publish up to 18 TMNT comics per year should he choose to do so – thus Mirage Publishing will remain in business at least until May, 2010.

Check out the press release from Viacom (they own Nick and numerous other entertainment companies) here.

Check out Peter Laird’s comments about the deal here.

At some point, Nick will assume control of the ninjaturtles.com domain name and Mirage will no longer be involved. Let me say it’s been an honor and pleasure talking with all of you over the years and I’ll miss this job more than I can say – but all good things come to an end and when doors close, doors open…

Speaking of which, I will be creating a new Mirage Studios web site for us to continue posting news and info about our comics. This site will be up and running soon and hopefully there will be a link here before any major changes take place.

I’m tempted to say "So long, and thanks for all the fish" – but we’ll still be here for a bit and we’ll definitely be around at the new Mirage site once it’s established. So please keep checking back here to find the new Mirage Studios URL over the next few weeks – and have an awesome weekend.

Cheers!
– Dan

As we know, Nickeolodeon purchased the rights to the TMNT last week for $60 million dollars, but this latest news suggests that any publication of TMNT comics set in the Mirage continuity will remain with Laird, if he chooses to do so. Tales of the TMNT writer Tristan Jones elaborated in a blog post on Newsarama :

Mirage Studios, Inc. will close on December 31, 2009 – so the current crew will become independent contractors on January 1 to get the final issues out. Mirage will continue to publish “Tales” until the May, 2010 issue – but as of now – that’s the end of the line. Peter did keep rights for Mirage to publish 18 TMNT comic books per year through the direct market, which would only be based on the current Mirage Universe stuff (eg: a continuation/conclusion to Volume 4).

While Peter did maintain the rights to do comic books, Mirage no longer has the rights to do trade paperbacks. So the “Mirage Universe” book solicited for December is canceled. What I’ve been told is that Mirage can only publish material between 32 and 48 pages long.

What could possibly happen is that say Nickelodeon/Viacom/Paramount/whoever decided to pick up the ball and run in a completely new direction with the Turtles, they’d be able to license that out to another company, and that company could potentially do anything they like, except publish anything that continues the currently established Mirage Universe, so any comics that would come from another company would be something completely new (what IDW is doing with Transformers and GI Joe is a pretty good example of the sort of thing that could be done).

Peter still owns Mirage, so there’s a chance that Mirage could continue publishing but there aren’t any solid plans for anything Turtle related yet (outside of what I just mentioned) or any new IP’s that I’m aware of.

The future looks bleak for Mirage, but for the intellectual property of the Teenage Mutant Ninnja Turtles, things are looking up, with Nickelodeon planning a new series and Paramount planning a new movie. Sometimes, change is good. Here’s hoping this holds true for a property that will always hold a special place in the heart of this reporter.

In any case, we still have Turtles Forever to look forward to in the near future!

Sources: Mirage , Newsarama

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Posted originally: 2009-10-27 21:04:19