Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze/Production

Due to the massive success of the first film, a sequel was expected. The film was produced on a budget of US$25 million, nearly twice the budget of the 1990 film, which was $13.5 million. Like the first film, New Line Cinema distributed The Secret of the Ooze. Both the voice actors of Michaelangelo and Leonardo reprised their roles in the second film, but Corey Feldman did not voice Donatello in the second movie after pleading no contest to a drug possession charge in December 1990. Cast as April O'Neil, Paige Turco succeeded Judith Hoag from the first film, for this film and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III. According to Hoag, she was not approached to reprise the role because the producers thought she complained too much during the first movie about the strenuous shooting schedule and amount of violence. The character of Casey Jones, who was prominent in the first movie, did not appear here though he returned in the following movie. Ernie Reyes Jr., who was Donatello's fight double in the first film, was cast as a new character, Keno, as the producers admired Reyes and his performance in the first movie so much they asked him to join the sequel. Todd W. Langen returned from the first film to write the screenplay. In July 2022, Kevin Nash revealed that Kevin Peter Hall was originally cast as the physical actor for the Super Shredder.
The characters of Bebop and Rocksteady, who were popular villains in the 1987 animated series, could not be used due to Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird objecting, with the latter stating that "their constant one-note shtick in the first animated series [was] extremely annoying and silly to the point of being stupid". As a result, Tokka and Rahzar were created. The Turtles fight bare-fisted for much of this film, to tone down the violence. The abandoned subway station, the new lair for the Turtles, is based on the real-life decommissioned City Hall station of the New York City Subway, built by the former Interborough Rapid Transit Company. The station is not completely abandoned, as it appears in the movie. Trains pass through the station daily as they turn around to head uptown, and passengers ride through the station, but the train does not stop and so they cannot disembark. During filming of the scene where the Turtles are trapped in the net and fall to the ground, one of the stuntmen broke an ankle. Some filming took place in North Carolina, like the first, where the New York City skyline was created at the North Carolina Film Studios. The building used for the entrance to April's apartment is the office of the New York location of Jim Henson's Creature Shop, which did the animatronics work for the film and its predecessor. The film is dedicated to the memory of Jim Henson, who had died the previous May.
Category:Production