Seth Rogen is branching out into animation in a big way in 2023, with his role as Donkey Kong in the Super Mario Bros movie, and he’s producing a new animated movie version of another 80s throwback: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie. He also has a voice role in the family movie, as Bebop alongside John Cena’s Rocksteady.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, in 2019’s The Lion King huge smash hit live-action remake, Rogen played Pumbaa, and he was lucky enough to record some of his scenes alongside Donald Glover (Simba) and Billy Eichner (Timon).
With animation, voice actors rarely ever get to work in the same vocal booth as their co-stars, but Rogen enjoyed this experience so much, he applied it to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, which is being produced by his company Point Grey Pictures. “For every session, we lumped people together. So every time the four turtles recorded, they were together. Me and John Cena were Bebop and Rocksteady, and we recorded together.”
Rogen continued; “So, we really went out of our way and bent over backwards on Ninja Turtles to try to capture that improvisational energy that you get when a lot of people are in the same place at the same time. I actually saw how helpful it was from doing Lion King.”
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem is due for release in August 2023. It’s directed by Jeff Rowe and Kyler Spears, who seem to have been influenced by Into the Spider-Verse for the comic-book looking animation style. Rowe was the co-director of acclaimed animated movie The Mitchells vs the Machines, and was a writer on Gravity Falls.
While we wait for the release of the new Turtles movie, check out our guide to the best 80s movies.