Rist later remarked that he could have been out of line since Bay makes more money than he does. In response to the announcement, actor Robbie Rist who voiced Michaelangelo the first three films, wrote to Bay accusing him of "sodomizing" the franchise. News of Bay's creative change was met with criticism from within the fan community. In early March, Michael Bay revealed at Nickelodeon's 2012 upfront presentation that the film will be simply titled Ninja Turtles and that the turtles will be "from an alien race". Later in March, it was announced that Paramount had pushed back film's release date to Christmas Day 2013. In February 2012, Jonathan Liebesman was brought in to negotiations to direct the film beating out Brett Ratner. A year later the Studio turns to writers Josh Appelbaum and André Nemec to rewrite the script. According to TMNT co-creator Kevin Eastman, the John Fusco version was a little too edgy for what Paramount wanted. For the script, the studio originally hired Matt Holloway and Art Marcum to write the film for close to a million dollars.
Bay, Fuller, and Form would produce alongside Walker and Mednick. In late May 2011, it was announced that Paramount and Nickelodeon had brought Michael Bay and his Platinum Dunes partners Bradley Fuller and Andrew Form on to produce the next film that will reboot the film series. Following the news of the buyout, it was announced that Nickelodeon would produce a new film through Paramount Pictures with an expected release date sometime in 2012.