Is Paramount Rebooting The ‘Transformers’ Cinematic Universe?
WhenTransformers: The Last Knightdebuted witha series-low opening daylast year, it was the latest signal that theMichael Bayera might finally be coming to an end after a full decade of cinematic chaos. Now it seems as if Paramount is ready to make some changes: a new rumor indicates that theTransformerscinematic universe may be getting a full reboot.
TransformersWorld(viaCollider) reports that, at a Hasbro Toy Fair Preview 2018 event today, the company “specifically stated that a new team at Paramount will reset the Transformers Live Action Movie Series” afterBumblebee: The Moviehits theaters later this December. The plannedTransformers 6– the untitled sequel toTransformers: The Last Knight– has apparently been removed from Paramount’s release calendar altogether, and there is no indication that anotherTransformersmovie will arrive in theaters until at least 2021.
As you’re able to see fromthis slide that accompanied the announcement, Hasbro and Paramount’s current movie slate includes four projects: aG.I. Joemovie and aMicronautsmovie both arriving in2020, and aDungeons and Dragonsmovie and a “Paramount/Hasbro event film” both set for2021.
Who Could Be the New Creative Force Behind This Franchise?
SinceTransformers: The Last Knightwas the most expensive movie in the franchise thus far and severely underperformed, it’s not remotely surprising that the studio would wipe the slate clean and attempt to right the ship here. (As I said,we wrote about it months ago.) But if Bay really is walking away and a “new team” truly is coming in to take over, who might be the creative leader of these movies going forward?
It wouldn’t be too crazy to think thatTravis Knightmay be the guy. He got his start as an animator before eventually becoming the head honcho at Laika, the stop-motion studio responsible for films likeParaNormanandThe Boxtrolls. Knight directed the excellentKubo and the Two Strings, but the biggest selling point here is that he’s also behind the camera for his live-action debut onBumblebee. If that film exceeds expectations, I could see Paramount handing him the keys to theTransformerskingdom.
For me, the main takeaway from this report is that theTransformersmovies might actually become watchable sometime in the next few years. Deservedly-maligned screenwriter Akiva Goldsman (Batman and Robin) was a key creative contributor toThe Last Knight, and he was hired to lead a writers' room for multipleTransformerssequels; throwing out all of that work and starting over with a whole new team sounds like the fresh start this franchise desperately needs.
