Production notes

In the mid-1980s, creators Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird were pitched a concept of a live-action film adaptation by Roger Corman for his studio New World Pictures. The film was to have starred comedians Sam Kinison, Gallagher, Bobcat Goldthwait and Billy Crystal in green make-up as the turtles. Another early concept for the film was to combine live-action footage with animated turtles, in the vein of Who Framed Roger Rabbit, before it was decided to use costumes for the turtles.

The turtle costumes were created by Jim Henson's Creature Shop in London. Jim Henson said that the creatures were the most advanced that he had ever worked with. The creatures were first made out of fiberglass, and then remolded out of clay. They were produced as molds to cast the whole body in foam rubber latex. The work at the Creature Shop was completed within 18 weeks. The costumes used state-of-the-art animatronics to make the face masks expressive. The masks included a set of internal animatronic mouths, eyes and eyebrows which were managed by a technician with the help of a computer. The computer could codify a set of expressions, such as anger or awe, which were later programmed into the keys of a joystick handed by the technician. Capture of movement was also used for the lips. The technician could wear a special helmet with cameras recording the lips when pronouncing a phrase, and transferring to the mechanical lips embedded in the masks.

The film's budget was $13.5 million. Its script was mainly based on the early Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comics, including the stories of the turtles' origins, rooftop battle, sojourn to the farmhouse, and battle with Shredder. Elements were taken from the 1980s animated series, such as the Turtles' colored bandanas and love of pizza, elements of Michelangelo's character, and April O'Neil as a television reporter instead of a lab assistant. Much of the production took place in North Carolina, with a couple of location shoots in New York City during the summer of 1989 to capture famous landmark areas, such as the World Trade Center, Times Square, the Empire State Building, and the Hudson River. Filming in North Carolina took place at the North Carolina Film Studios, where New York rooftop sets were created. Production designer Roy Forge Smith and his art director, Gary Wissner, went to New York City four months prior to filming and took still photographs of rooftops and other various locations. While in NYC, Smith and Wissner were allowed to explore an abandoned Brooklyn subway line, as they could not gain access to a city sewer, but the structure of the subway had the same principle as a sewer. They also went to a water tunnel which had large pipes running through it. Eastman has a small role as a garbage man; according to him, he was supposed to have a larger role, but it ended up being a background cameo instead. Laird revealed in the 2014 Turtle Power documentary that he was also asked to play a small cameo role in the film, but he politely declined the offer as he was not comfortable with cameos in general. Many major studios, such as Walt Disney Pictures, Columbia Pictures, Universal Pictures, MGM/UA, Orion Pictures, 20th Century Fox (which later would distribute the sequels internationally), Paramount Pictures (whose parent company Viacom would acquire the TMNT property in 2009), and Warner Bros. Pictures (which later would distribute the 2007 animated film, and collaborate with DC to make an animated crossover with Batman) turned down the film for distribution; they were worried that despite the popularity of the cartoon and the toy line, the film could potentially be a box office disappointment, like Masters of the Universe was just a couple years prior. The film found distribution roughly halfway through the initial production, via the then-small and independent production company New Line Cinema, which had been known for distributing low-budget B movies and arthouse fare. According to Brian Henson, the film was finished in post-production largely without Barron's involvement. Editor Sally Menke, who later edited many films by Quentin Tarantino, was removed as production company Golden Harvest did not like her work.

The film opened in the United States on March 30, 1990, and was number one at the box office over the weekend, grossing more than $25 million, the biggest opening weekend an independent film had ever had up to that time. It went on to gross $32 million in its opening week, making it the second biggest US opening ever up until then (after 1989's Batman). The film turned out to be a huge success at the box office, eventually making over $135 million in North America, and over $66 million outside North America, for a worldwide total of over $200 million, making it the ninth highest-grossing film of 1990 worldwide. The film was also nominated for awards by The Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films. During its 2025 theatrical re-release, the film made $3.3 million during its first week. Its success led to Fathom Events extending the re-release for an additional week and a re-release for the sequel Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze which released in March 2026.

On the film's initial release, Roger Ebert gave 2.5 out of 4 stars and concluded it to be "nowhere near as bad as it might have been, and probably is the best possible Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle movie. It supplies, in other words, more or less what Turtle fans will expect". Ebert singled out the production design, which he described as a "low-rent version of Batman or Metropolis." Ebert also erroneously believed it to be based on a video game. Variety praised the film's tongue-in-cheek humor and "amusingly outlandish" martial arts sequences, but thought it was "visually rough around the edges" and "sometimes sluggish in its plotting". Janet Maslin of The New York Times criticized the cinematography, stating that it was so "poorly photographed that the red-masked turtle looks almost exactly like the orange-masked one". Kim Newman wrote in the Monthly Film Bulletin that he found the characters reminiscent of the early 1970s Godzilla film series, describing the turtles as "loveable monsters in baggy foam rubber suits" who "befriended lost children and smashed things up in orgies of destruction that somehow never hurt anyone" and "drop the occasional teenage buzzword but are never remotely convincing as teenagers, mutants, ninjas or turtles". Variety, the New York Times, and the Monthly Film Bulletin all noted the Asian villains of the film; Variety described "overtones of racism in its use of Oriental villains", while Maslin stated "the story's villainous types are Asian, and the film plays the yellow-peril aspects of this to the hilt". Newman noted a racist joke in April O'Neil's response to the Foot Clan, "What's the matter, did I fall behind on my Sony payments?", finding that the film expressed a "resentment of Japan's economic strength even while the film is plundering Japan's popular culture". Ebert felt there was "no racism" in the film. Lloyd Bradley of Empire gave the film four out of five stars, stating: "A well-rounded, unpretentious, very funny, knockabout adventure – subtly blended so that it's fun for all the family". Owen Gleiberman, writing for Entertainment Weekly, gave an F rating, finding that none of the four turtles or Splinter had any personality, but felt that a young audience might enjoy the film, noting he might have "gone for it too had I been raised on Nintendo games and the robotic animation that passes for entertainment on today's Saturday-morning TV". Entertainment Weekly and The New York Times praised the work of Jim Henson's Creature Shop, with Maslin stating "without which there would have been no film at all". As of 2025, the film has an approval rating of 46% on Rotten Tomatoes based on reviews from 57 critics and an average rating of 5.10/10. The website's consensus states, "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is exactly as advertised: one-liners, brawls, and general silliness. Good for the young at heart, irritating for everyone else". On Metacritic, it has a score of 51 based on reviews from 21 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Turtles co-creator Peter Laird praised the film in the 2014 documentary Turtle Power: The Definitive History of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles saying, "I cannot sit here and honestly say there is anything I would change about [the movie] to make them better." Kevin Eastman went on to say in 2022 that this film will always be the best Turtles film adaptation.