Transformers: The Last Knight (June 23, 2017)

Well this is an interesting turn of events. Despite the fact that they’ve almost all been critically panned, the Transformers movies make money. They make a lot of money. Transformers: Age of Extinction alone grossed nearly $1.1 billion, so whether people want them or not, there will be more Transformers movies. The question, then, has been what form will the continuation of the franchise take?


After Transformers: Dark of the Moon, director Michael Bay famously planned to hand the franchise off to a new filmmaker who could semi-reboot the series. He subsequently changed his mind and came back to helm Age of Extinction himself, resulting in pretty much the same movie we’ve been watching for four films in a row now, only with more Mark Wahlberg and less Shia LaBeouf. Bay previously said he’d be handing Transformers 5 off to another filmmaker, and he subsequently opted to move forward with the Benghazi drama 13 Hours as his next film, but given his history you never really know.


Regardless, Bay remains involved in the franchise as a producers, and Paramount has some plans. Big plans. Deadline reports today that the studio is looking to go ahead and put together a plan not only for Transformers 5, but for multiple Transformers sequels and spinoffs, and they’ve enlisted writer/producer/director Akiva Goldsman—whose screenplay credits range from the Oscar-winning A Beautiful Mind to I Am Legend to The Divergent Series: Insurgent—to spearhead the effort.


The idea is for Goldsman, Bay, executive producer Steven Spielberg, and producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura to put together a so-called “writer’s room” and develop a Transformers multi-sequel idea as well as potential Transformers spinoff movies. The report likens it to how James Cameron enlisted four screenwriters to write the scripts for all three Avatar sequels at once, but it’s clear that Paramount is actually cribbing from Marvel’s playbook. They want an inter-connected universe and a serialized set of Transformers movies rather than standalone entries.


Deadline notes that Bay wants this all hammered out by the time he’s done with 13 Hours so that Transformers 5 “can move forward quickly,” but it’s unclear if that means Bay intends to direct or just produce. The report also says that Goldsman might not actually do any screenwriting here, he may just act as the “showrunner”, helping incubate the ideas and hire writers to do the actual penning of the script. If you needed any further proof that the “inter-connected universe” idea is essentially approaching films like television, here is a literal writer’s room.


I only got enjoyment out of the first Transformers so I’ve got little hope of this new approach turning me around on the franchise personally, but it’s a smart move from a business standpoint. No doubt they’ll come up with a number of films to greenlight simultaneously, leading to a steady stream of Transformers movies hitting theaters for years and years to come. Hooray?

It’s pencils down for the Transformers Writers Room; the experiment has concluded and the early results are in. Akiva Goldsman has walked away with a concrete blueprint to write a Transformers sequel for Mark Wahlberg to star in for Michael Bay to direct, with production starting in June. Ant-Man scribes Andrew Barrer & Gabriel Ferrari will head off and write an animated feature, an origin story that focuses on Cybertron, the planet from which the good and bad Transformer robots hail.

As for the rest of the writers who spent more than two weeks on a soundstage where Glee held dance recitals on the Paramount lot? Well, they didn’t set a bunch of other movies, but a few could come up down the line. Black Hawk Down scribe Ken Nolan, Christina Hodson and Lindsey Beer, Barrer & Ferrari, Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman, Iron Man scribes Art Marcum & Matt Holloway, Pacific Rim 2‘s Zak Penn, Amazing Spider-Man 2 and Lost’s Jeff Pinkner, Spartacus creator and Daredevil showrunner Steven DeKnight and Geneva Robertson-Dworet all took part.

All of them hatched ideas together and collaborated to flesh out the universe of the Hasbro toy line to come up with possible spinoffs, sequels and prequels that they then peeled off and generated treatments. Goldsman supervised the whole thing, and everybody pitched to Steven Spielberg, Bay, Paramount, Hasbro’s Brian Goldner and producers Lorenzo di Bonaventura and Mark Vahradian and Don Murphy. I had heard they discovered that some of the ideas didn’t sustain full features and that maybe the universe wasn’t as big as suspected, but insiders say in fact that when all the pitches and treatments were reviewed, that Spielberg felt there were potential movies in five of the nine. They have three years to engage those writers to generate scripts based on the treatments they submitted. The loose plan is Goldsman first, the animated movie script, then a script by Pinkner, then one by Beers. Perhaps the most important thing that creating a proper Bible of places they could go is that they will plant seeds from the best ideas into the Transformers sequel that Goldsman is writing — the one that is expected to be the last that Bay directs himself. They’ve got enough ideas already to do one more Transformers film even if Bay decides not to direct it, but they’ll have created opportunities for spinoffs to keep moving on Paramount’s biggest franchise not named Mission: Impossible.

Was this experiment worth it? It was an investment of low seven figures paid to all those writers to script treatments. I’m told that everyone involved, including the writers, felt it was money and time well spent. The writers did not turn it into a competition, and they collaborated and explored just about every possible angle to broaden the Transformers universe and come up with possible movies. Considering that the last Transformers grossed $1.4 billion worldwide, the cost of this was pittance. Just as important, the results got Spielberg and Bay excited, which is no small feat considering they’ve been with the movie since its inception and have plenty of other things to capture their passion.

Goldsman told Deadline before they started that the hope was to reap the best collaborative things that come from TV writers rooms, and it appears that has happened, despite the uncertainty over how many movies were hatched. Universal is doing something similar to revive its classic monsters franchise, and they’re also doing it with Star Wars and at Marvel. I wouldn’t be surprised to see it happen with other franchise commitments, including the DC Comics projects and the recently instituted giant monster mashups that Legendary just moved from Universal to Warner Bros and which will pit King Kong against Godzilla. That could be expanded to other giant creatures controlled by Toho.

Michael Bay has confirmed that he will return for TRANSFORMERS 5, the fifth installment of Paramount‘s blockbuster franchise. The director has been at the helm for all four previous installments, which have grossed well over a billion dollars.

The script, written by Black Hawk Down scribe Ken Nolan and Iron Man writers Art Marcum and Matt Holloway, is expected to expand the Transformers universe and set up the previously announced spin-off films–several of which were developed in Paramount’s Transformers writers’ room headed up by Akiva Goldsman. Mark Wahlberg is set to return for the film, with Lorenzo Di Bonaventura producing and Steven Spielberg executive producing. Bay will also serve as an executive producer.

Bay’s 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi, starring John Krasinski, hits theaters this month. Bay is repped by WME.

Rusty Cunt wrote:Awesome. These flicks are stupid fun. I love 'em.

Awesome movie rumour I heard, Transformers to join universes with GI Joe.

Paramount pictures has announced the release dates for the next three films in its Transformers will franchise.

A new Transformers movie will explode into box offices in June for the next three consecutive years.

Transformers 5 arrives on June 23, 2017, Transformers 6 follows on June 8, 2018, and Transformers 7 will be released on June 28, 2019.

Transformers 5 will see Michael Bay returning to the director’s chair, and Mark Wahlberg of Transformers: Age of Extinction returning as the human lead. The script is being penned by Iron Man writers Art Marcum and Matt Holloway. The film’s June 23, 2017 release date will pit it against DC Films’ Wonder Woman on opening weekend.

The ability to churn out Transformers sequels on a yearly basis is probably due to Paramount forming a Transformers Writers Room, a hive-mind of talent tasked with charting the course for the Hasbro franchise.