Nickelodeon

Nickelodeon is a television channel catering primarily to children's programming. It is owned by MTV Networks, a division of Viacom.

On October 21, 2009, a press release was made indicating that Viacom had bought the complete rights of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise from Peter Laird for $60 million, and would be developing a CGI animated TV series for its Nickelodeon family of channels for broadcast in 2012. A feature film, to be released by Paramount Pictures (also a division of Viacom), is also slated for 2012.

Following the sale, it was announced that after 4Kids' run of the series ends on August 31, 2010, Nickelodeon would then gain sole broadcast rights for the 2003 series. Viacom and Nickelodeon also expressed interest in obtaining the rights to the original cartoon series for broadcast.

A clause in the contract allows Peter Laird to self-publish and distribute up to 18 issues of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles-related material with 48 pages or less each.

Various sources of varying veracity have reported that Nickelodeon's 2012 series will be reminiscent of the 1987 series, and may even use characters that originated there.