It's been discovered that the recent promotional posters released for Netflix's
War For Cybertron TV series
all feature a Cybertronian letter:
- K - Bumblebee
- I - Ultra Magnus
- N - Elita-1
- G - Optimus Prime
- D - Megatron
- O - Jetfire
- M - Starscream
KINGDOM - A word with seemingly no connection to the
War For Cybertron Trilogy as we know it, and thus a strange word to include in the promotional material... or is it?
Next year, 2021, is of course the 25th Anniversary of Beast Wars. I put to you the notion that
KINGDOM (i.e. the animal kingdom) will be the name of
War For Cybertron Part 3, and will feature Beast Wars characters alongside G1 characters.
You may feel that this would be a move that's a little out of the blue, but it's something that's been hinted at as far back as 2017:
- CLUES FOR BEAST WARS IN PART 3 OF THE WAR FOR CYBERTRON TRILOGY -
- WAR FOR CYBERTRON: KINGDOM -
In an interview with TFU.Info at HasCon in 2017, John Warden gives an insight into episodes he's been watching:John Warden hints at WFC TrilogyNote: This is before
War For Cybertron: Siege was announced.
John: I've been watching a lot of episode one of the original three part episode, a lot, where they're on Cybertron and they're stealing Energon out of the pipes and things like that. I also really like the
Rebirth. I know it's a contentious episode but I think that's a really good one as well. And I'm also a big fan of
Call of the Primitives. I think that's a really cool episode as well.
1.
More Than Meets The Eye (Part 1) - Takes place on Cybertron before the voyage to Earth, like
Siege2.
The Rebirth - Introduced Scorponok, like
Earthrise3.
Call of the Primitives - Revolves around Transformers with Beast-Modes
John Warden, speaking with Toy Hype USA at SDCC 2018:Hasbro Transformers SDCC 2018 Video Interview with Brand TeamQ: Any news for Beast Wars?
A: Beast Wars is approaching it's 25th Anniversary in a couple of years. We recognise that our Transformers universe is broad and I'm certainly a huge fan of the Beast Wars series. The swash-buckling hi-jinks of Optimus Primal and the team. I think with a big event like an anniversary on the horizon, Hasbro certainly want to do something to celebrate this exciting occasion with the fans. I think it's, uh, how we do it, and what charatcers we do, it's honestly one of the big reasons why we come to events like this is, you know, to talk to people. Are you a Beast Wars fan? What do you like about Beast Wars? What are your favourite characters? I personally love it just from a story-telling standpoint, it's incredible. I also love those final episodes, how it has a connection back to G1. It reminds us that we're all part of the same Transformers fan universe, and family, it's great.
John Warden, speaking with Toy Shiz at SDCC 2019:SDCC Hasbro Live Interview w/ Transformers Siege TeamQ: Will we see
Beast Wars characters?
A: We have a lot of characters to choose from. Um. When we look at what we're going to do, we also kind of look at the anniversaries that are coming up. There is certainly an anniversary for
Beast Wars on the horizon. So we cannot confirm or deny any product development. Um. But we do know that there's lots of awesome
Beast Wars fans out there. An incredible untapped potential between characters like Dinobot, Cheetor, Rattrap, Optimus Primal, Tigatron, Airazor. All these awesome characters that are part of so many people's lives. And uh, so, although yes, I'm going to answer that question indirectly, I'm not going to say it's not ever going to happen.
John Warden and Ben Montano speaking with TFU.INFO at New York Toy Fair 2020:Live from the Toy Fair ShowroomQ: Before you mentioned beyond Earthrise, that next phase, I heard you mention before hints about Beast Wars, and we also have the Beast Wars Anniversary coming up. Would Beast Wars be a consideration for the line down the line? I think there's a big demand out there for that.
Ben: I think as we continue to kind of expand the product, the story universe, we do look back to kind of every continuity and you see Beast Wars, and homaged that a little bit with Cheetor kind of coming into the Cyberverse storytelling. I think it's all about respecting the stories that were created, finding the right opportunities.
John: To do it right.
Ben: To do it right. You know, the '86 movie, while it was G1, it was kind of an off-shoot, kind of it's own stand-alone almost story universe. I mean Optimus died for god's sake, right? So, I think, yeah, definitely nothing is out of the realm of possibility for us. And as John said, we listen to the fans, we listen to you guys. It's just sometimes it's the right place at the right time.
John: Yeah, you know, I've been on this brand for like 6 years now, 7 years, maybe. But one of the things that's always impressed me, and this is going back to like the old BotCon days, thinking about the fan conventions, San Diego Comic-Con. Whenever I talk to fans, it always impresses me that everybody has a moment from Transformers that's theirs. Whether it's the 2007 live action films, Armada, Prime, Animated, Japanese series, Beast Wars. Those moments are all special to different people, and at the end of the day we're all Transformers fans. I think one of my big jobs that I've kind of put upon myself, a heavy burden, is like, how do you bring those different pieces of the fan universe together? You know it's an honour to be able to do it, because when you delivery the perfect something to one of these fans, not only do you get those fans excited, you get other types of fans excited too. So I think when you look at Beast Wars, there's so much awesome material out there, and I think it's certainly something we'd like to accomplish.
Ben: The future is bright for Transformers.
John: The future is absolutely bright.
Radio Free Cybertron interview with John Warden and Ben Montano at Toy Fair 2020:RFC Daily News Update 077 Update 1Q: Is there any chance that we will get Beast Wars again anytime soon?
John: Beast Wars is most certainly an important and epic piece of the fabric of the Transformers universe. As we start to think about the entirety of the possibilities within Transformers, the beasts within Beast Wars are especially compelling and offer an incredible challenge for us as designers and marketing and everybody. But I think it's a little too early to talk about the potential of Beast Wars, but it's safe to say there are many Beast Wars fans within the team.
Ben: Yeah, and I think you'll see even with Cyberverse, among the Cyberverse we started to bring Cheetor and others into the story universe. It's a fun era of storytelling, like John said, for future storytelling for sure.
John: And moreover, it really means so much to so many people, and I think that's really important to be reticent when you're working on a brand like Transformers.
John Warden and Ben Montano, speaking with Allspark TV at Toy Fair 2020:Toy Fair 2020 Interview with Ben Montano and John WardenQ: With the success of the G1 reissue line, are there any plans to reissues toys from any other lines like Beast Wars, Robots in Disguise or the Unicron Trilogy?
John: Absolutely. When you look across our franchise, you've got great Beast Wars characters...
Ben: Careful what you say, John. But yes, the answer in short is yes. We have lots of great anniversaries this year, next year and for the foreseeable future.
John: Even in Cyberverse, right? Beast Wars characters are there. You've got Unicron Trilogy. Yeah, so Gen Selects is a good opportunity to put Cybertron Defence Hot Shot in there, totally random. But there's some other great characters from Armada. You know, I'm a big fan of the Armada Starscream. Awesome characters. Different personality. Really cool alt-form. And a whole generation of fans grew up with it. So I mean, that's the cool thing about working on. I like making new stuff, but there's so much cool material you can draw from.
Ben: And I think that's the balance of what we've had fun doing. When we have a chance to bring some vintage with the actual G1 reissue toys, we've reimagined a lot of G1 characters, we're starting to bring Beast Wars characters, starting to bring others whether it's Armada and all of that, kinda into this modern universe and that's equally as fun. We're seeing a lot of teens, tweens, like "wow, this is so cool", and they have no idea of the original source material for those characters when they first get in, but then they dive in, they figure it out, and now they're introduced to whether it's Cybertron, Energon or Prime.
John: I remember when I first came onto this brand many, many years ago [...] I was a G1 kid, I grew up with G1. I read the comics and I watched the show. I'd just got off watching the new movies from Paramount, so that was my knowledge. I knew about Beast Wars, knew about some things, but it wasn't until I really got in there, started to talking to people at San Diego, at other conventions. You see the passion in people's faces when they talk about the Armada Trilogy, they talk about the Bay Universe, and you get energised from that. You realise, like when I started, I went back and started watching all these old [...] and I fell in love with it. And it's crazy, you understand why people love Dinobot so much. And it's like, you feel it. And I think that's the magic of working on a brand like this. Just like the brand, the characters convert, they transform, it has a way of transforming you.
TransMissions Podcast Network interview with John Warden at FanExpo Canada 2019:FanExpo Canada 2019 - Interview with Hasbro's John Warden and Ran SunQ: How much pre-production would go into figures that you've included in recent fan polls? Have there any poll winners that surprised you? Were you expecting another figure to win?
A: So the thing that surprised me was POTP Optimus Primal winning. You know, I would have expected, you know, like Star Saber or one of those other guys, like Ultra Magnus. And it just goes to show you, do not underestimate the
Beast Wars fanbase. You know, it's a juggernaut online, like, those guys are very vocal and they get excited about these fan polls. So that one surprised me.
Graphic Policy interview with John Warden at SDCC 2019:SDCC 2019: Talking Transformers with Design Manager John WardenQ: The thing that really stands out about Transformers to me in what you're all doing is you're telling a story on top of being toys, which is very unique. How does that work when it comes to toy design, coming up with these stories?
A: Story is really important for us on Transformers. It's one of those things that, especially with the War For Cybertron Trilogy, we put a lot of thought early on. What are we going to do for three years? We try to figure the story out. What universes are we going to touch on? What is the journey? What is it going to look like? And to be honest, there was a point, several years ago now, where if you walked into my office, it was, like, crazy. They had like string and stuff all over my wall and I'd bring people into my office to convince them. There are certain assumptions that happen, like, so, there are things that happen that are new but we do have to lean back on some assumptions from G1, because we don't want to throw out the old story because we're dealing with people's memories and a lot of these great pieces of Transformers make sense. We want to keep those things going but we want to allow the universe to grow in a way that feels organic, and then a lot of times that the toy line reflects that, and how things grow and change.
John Warden repeatedly mentions Beast Wars during the live panel with SyFy at NYCC 2019:New York Comic Con 2019 Transformers Panel NYCC Thursday October 3 SyFy Live StageNew Beast Wars Comic Book Series coming from IDW:IDW 2020 The Future of Comics… Today! | WonderCon@Home 2020Chris Ryall: I don't know if there's other Transformers plans we want to discuss here or not. You know, the ongoing series is doing it's thing, but maybe, uh. Beast Wars has an anniversary coming up if I'm not mistaken.
John Barber: It does, yes. And that is something we want to maybe sort of talk about. I don't think we've talked about this anywhere. There'll be a new Beast Wars series coming very soon. I know more details about it. I know a little bit more about it than that. But we're not ready to tell anything. But yeah, it's going to be the anniversary of Beast Wars. I think that's a... It's such a huge thing worldwide. Beast-Mode. Everyone knows what that means. Yeah, it'll be exciting to come back into that world. You know, over the years, we've had a lot of the characters show up. I, personally, have given short-shrift to a lot of those Beast Wars characters in stories I've written. Sorry. This won't be that. This will be genuine Beast Wars that I think a lot of people grew up with, and a lot of people love.
Chris Ryall: I mean that's kinda the cool thing about Transformers as a whole, you know. There's the Beast Wars fans that are rabid for more Beast Wars, and the UK fans that grew up loving that, and the fans of the main book that we've been doing, and all the other iterations. And so, it's great that there's not only audiences for all of this kind of content, but also that there's the passion from the fans that want to keep seeing more of all of it. So...
John Barber: Yeah, I mean a lot of our Transformers creators, for years, Beast Wars has been stuff that people grew up with. That was what introduced them to this world.
Marcelo Matere produces a poster for SDCC 2019 featuring G1, Movieverse, Unicron Trilogy and Beast Wars characters:
I asked Marcelo, via the new
Transformers: Til All Are One; Where Fans and Talent come together! Facebook group, about the poster and the choices of the universes featured. He confirmed that the choices were made by Hasbro.
Earthrise introduces a Mercenary faction, opening the door for other factions in the future:The siege is over, but the War for Cybertron has just begun. The Autobots and Decepticons have left Cybertron, but their battle rages on as they hurtle through space in pursuit of the Allspark. With unforeseen dangers lurking ahead and the Decepticons closing in from behind, the only way out for the Autobots is to find a way through. Both sides must navigate the perils of space and instantly adapt to battle anywhere in the cosmos. With the highly advanced A.I.R. (Adaptable Interconnection Retrofitter) Locks system, the fighters don’t head to the battlefield, they become it. Bots capable of converting into Modular Battle Stations can A.I.R.-Lock together in custom configurations to fit the needs of battle. As the battle rages through space, success depends on who can best adapt to the battlefield beyond. But it’s not just the battlefield that commands adaptability. Allegiances can shift just as rapidly, with a new Mercenary faction introduced into the Earthrise world alongside the Autobots and Decepticons.
Walmart listing for War For Cybertron Netflix Deluxe Cheetor:Click Here for the news thread.
IMDB listing for Beau Marie voicing the character of Tigatron in Season 3 of Netflix's War For Cybertron:
Click Here for Beau's IMDB Page (the listing has since been removed).
Click Here for the original post with screencaps.
Hasbro Pulse Beast Wars Megatron T-Shirt:Click Here for the news thread.
Additional Points:- Titans Return 'Siege on Cybertron' boxset featured the Beast Wars logo for no explicable reason
- Optimus Primal wins the Power of the Primes fan poll
- Beast Wars characters in Earth Wars
- Beast Wars characters in Forged to Fight
- IDW releases Transformers 100-page Giant: Power of the Predacons
- Beast Wars characters served Unicron in the IDW1 Continuity
- Cheetor appears in the Cyberverse TV show and receives a figure
- Blackarachnia receives a 'Tiny Turbo Charger' Cyberverse figure
- Additional rumoured Beast Wars Cyberverse figures
- The Primals, a faction on pre-War Cybertron in the 2019 IDW continuity
- Generations Selects release of Beast Wars II God Neptune
- All this talk of a Beast Wars movie...
Posted: Sun Nov 11, 2018 1:35 pm
Nice work rounding up all this information!
That's 
