Hasbro Confirms Currently Working with Paramount on New Transformers Films

I don't care what the next movie or two is as long as their good and entertaining.


Would also prefer a reboot using Bumblebee as the first movie in a new continuity but if some miracle man can somehow make the Bay continuity actually work then I guess more power to them.

If they could make a full CGI movie based on that awesome Cybertron intro scene from the Bee Movie, I'd be glad. If the story is Megatron's origin and the start of the Transformers civil war, I'd be really happy!

robotcaveman wrote:Looks good. YouTuber AndySupreme99,already confirmed that thanks to Bee’s success, we’re gonna get FIVE new tf movies in the future. There’s gonna be a Cybertron prequel, a Bumblebee 2, a Beast Wars movie, an Optimus Prime movie, and these four will build up to the Avengers styled Blockbuster Transformers Film. Get pumped folkes, we got a lot to look forward to in the upcoming decade.

That's a lot of movies... Bee did well, but it wasn't a box office smash, I honestly think AndySupreme99 might be jumping the gun. Then again if they're gonna try and work it like the Marvel movies...

Either way, I hope Bumblebee has show Paramount/Hasbro/Hollywood/WHOMEVER that the only way that these movies work for both just entertainment value and critical value is to have someone in the director's chair that actually CARES about the franchise. Bay did well in bringing Transformers back into the limelight with his manner, but I don't think it should have gone on for as long as it did. Knight has been a relief as he focused on the characters and interactions to create an emotional connection to reflect his emotional connection with the characters. I just hope that whomever takes the reigns for any of these movies has the same care, consideration, and just does the research to make it work.

I'm not interested in anything if Bumblebee is the major focus. He ruined the franchise for me. I'm still messing around with some Combiner Wars but other than that I'm done with this franchise. There is nothing here for me anymore. Been a fan since 84 but between the MENTALLY SICK BUMBLEBEE WORSHIP the fans are currently suffering from & the constant price hikes I've lost interest.

So, I am happy to hear that they're working on the next film, which will hopefully be good, whatever it is. However, what interests me most about this article is the news (at least to me, I don't know if you guys somehow found out about this) that Netflix is offering to work with Hasbro on a potential Transformers Netflix Original. I would love it if we could convince them to either make a cartoon adaptation of IDW's More than Meets the Eye, with James Roberts in control, or make something completely original and amazing, with Roberts or any other creative person in control of it.

Anyways, I just REALLY want to see my favorite piece of TF media get some animated love and attention.

Question ...

Why do people say Knights "cares" about the franchise and that Bay didn't?

Isn't it more likely a case of they're two different directors who had different writing staff? Hence the ... difference?

But that doesn't say to me Knight "cares", he grew up with them, that doesn't scream "fanboy".

Just seems to me it's two directors who have two different styles working with a bunch of different writers.

And it's time people accepted that the writers need to be held to task/lauded as well instead of blaming/praising just the director. As far as I'm concerned, the Bay movies got progressively worse as the writers changed.

So this whole "Travis Knight cares about the franchise" is baseless. He has a different style to directing and he had a decent writer to work with.

Burn wrote:But that doesn't say to me Knight "cares", he grew up with them, that doesn't scream "fanboy".

Just seems to me it's two directors who have two different styles working with a bunch of different writers.

And it's time people accepted that the writers need to be held to task/lauded as well instead of blaming/praising just the director. As far as I'm concerned, the Bay movies got progressively worse as the writers changed.

So this whole "Travis Knight cares about the franchise" is baseless. He has a different style to directing and he had a decent writer to work with.

Not completely. I know I mentioned before that I've watched a lot of Knight's LAIKA work, where he's been pretty much everything before directing Kubo and the two strings. In the bonus features for Kubo, Knight pretty much lays out how when he had a basic script for the movie and decided that it was to have a feudal/warring states period feel he dove into research. He spend months researching for how the characters should look, act, on how the sets should look, and what would be considered appropriate for that time period. He reached out to a couple of Japanese historical societies and museums to get the approval for his design choices, and then went above and beyond by making the more fantastical environments reflect the ukiyo-e woodblock prints. It was after he had the look completed that he then worked on the script and reworked it to better reflect what he had researched and changed with his sets and characters.

Knight is by far more meticulous and detail oriented than Bay on how his movie should work, which could be very well a by product of his stop motion animation background. Bay has stated in his interviews/behind the scenes that he's left the research to others and that he focuses more on how the visuals for the special effects look rather than how the scenes flow. I will however also state that the editing process can be a movie killer as well.

Long speech over with just this final comment. Movies have a lot of fingers in the clay shaping them, and yes directors will get most of the credit or blame because their name is always listed first, and they always have the chance to force a writer change or rework the script while in production. Then if the studio doesn't like it then they'll just fire the director, and get somebody else in there to take the fall.

So it's not so much that he "cares about Transformers", but more so "he cares about his craft".

I had nothing against Bay's style, but for me, with each change of writers, the movies got worse and worse. Christina Hodson deserves a good chunk of credit as well.

Burn wrote:So it's not so much that he "cares about Transformers", but more so "he cares about his craft".

I'd say Bay cares very much about his craft. Countless interviews with both him and members of his film and production crew have talked about how meticulous and passionate he is about things like cinematography and special effects. Getting just the right angles, using the best possible technology to capture the scene just right, that sort of thing.

Granted, that's a different kind of "caring about the craft" than what's been said of Knight doing research and showing a loving appreciation towards the source material, but both men love different aspects of the craft.

I think it best boils down to, for better or for worse (it's all opinionated) what Lindsay Ellis once said in one of her video essays discussing the Transformers films through the lenses of film studies:

"In the intersection between the Bay politique and Transformers lies the answer both to why the films have been so successful, and why many fans of the franchise find the films so noxious. Bay politique appeals to a main stream, but it does not line up with the sincere honorship of nostalgia. The message in Michael Bay's Transformers about Transformers is not 'Let's leave these wonderful creations in the innocent world of children where they belong,' it's more along the lines of 'Why would you wanna play with plastic toys when you can play with titties, you *bleep*in' losers?' So when people say 'Michael Bay raped my childhood,' ...what they really mean is Michael Bay added politique to something innocent. Michael Bay took this memory of a property that I hold fondly and robbed it of its magical, nostalgic value by dragging it into this idea of things that 'really' matter like the military, titties, and cars, which are all shown as vastly superior to the childlike quality of the franchise itself. It isn't really even about political affiliation or world views so much as its reverence for the source material, of which Michael Bay has none, which is why people who have a vague memory of the Transformers franchise (i.e. - most people) tend to respond more positively to these movies than people with a more intense knowledge and affinity for the franchise."