The ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ Movie Gets Weirder With Johnny Knoxville As Leonardo And Tony Shaloub As Splinter

It's starting to look more and more like the new, Michael Bay-produced Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie could be one gigantic exercise in trolling an audience.

The newest evidence of that comes from the casting department. Apparently Jackass star and former Duke of Hazzard Johnny Knoxville will be the voice of Leonardo and Tony Shaloub, who played the title character on Monk for eight seasons, will be Splinter.

I don't know, you guys. I'm just reporting it.

It's weird news for a lot of reasons. For one, it seemed as though the actors who did motion capture for the Turtles were going to be handling their voices. They aren't martial artists; they're all actors. Pete Ploszek, who did the motion capture for Leonardo, was probably the least-experienced of the bunch, but he had sort of a Leonardo look to him. Knoxville is a complete left-field choice, given his reputation as a Southern-fried rabblerouser (Though I guess he is kind of the leader of the Jackass guys) and seems like more of a Michelangelo to an extent. Knoxville's also about 15 years older than any of the guys playing the other turtles.

Actor Danny Woodburn, who you may remember as Mickey on Seinfeld, did the motion capture for Splinter. That seems like more of a lateral move.

There's no word on whether the other Turtle actors will have their voices dubbed over by another actor, but this seems to be pointing toward the studio, Paramount, trying to bring some recognizable names into the cast list to drum up publicity (remember how big Corey Feldman doing Donatello's voice in the 1990 movie was?).

This is also all happening pretty late in the game. The Jonathan Liebesman-directed movie opens August 8, so the filmmakers have all of about four months to get their voices in order.

This thing may be a total disaster. It's sort of exciting, isn't it?

[Via ScreenCrush]