Zodiac and Army of the Dead writers penning new Transformers movies

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

Despite largely negative reviews, the TRANSFORMERS franchise could always be counted upon to clean up at the box-office, but with the last two films in the series, TRANSFORMERS: THE LAST KNIGHT and BUMBLEBEE, generating considerably less cold hard cash, Paramount and Hasbro have been scrambling to rebuild the franchise.

Per Variety, the studios have tasked James Vanderbilt, best known for ZODIAC and THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN, as well as Joby Harold, best known for KING ARTHUR: LEGEND OF THE SWORD and Zack Snyder's upcoming ARMY OF THE DEAD, with writing scripts for two separate TRANSFORMERS projects which are being developed simultaneously. It's too early to know what direction these projects will take, but Variety's sources say that both projects "present an opportunity build out multiple storylines within the franchise." It's also likely that both projects will feature brand-new casts. Although it wasn't a huge box-office success, BUMBLEBEE was the most critically successful TRANSFORMERS film by far, so I wouldn't rule out one of those projects serving as some sort of BUMBLEBEE follow-up.

Several months after the release of BUMBLEBEE, franchise producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura said that they were attempting to meld BUMBLEBEE's more character-driven storytelling with a little more Michael Bay-style action.

Several lessons have come out of this. One is that we have the freedom to tell almost any story. The other is that, how strongly the audience identified with the strength of character and emotion. I know the next Transformer, our attempt anyway, is to sort of do a fusion of Bumblebee and the Bay movies…a little more Bayhem. And a little bit more of the character falling in love within the emotional dynamic of the movie. One of the things I want to do—and I hope we pull it off—is, we did it with Bumblebee because he’s so cute and he’s so accessible, but he can’t talk. I think the more human we can make these characters, the more people are going to like them.

Where would you like to see the TRANSFORMERS franchise go?