Writers, Director Hired for New Transformers Animated Movie

Hey, no time no read. But then been long time since actual movies news for Transformers. That has finally changed as Deadline reports that Hasbro's studio eOne along with Paramount are working on an animated movie. The movie will be based on a script from Andrew Barrer and Gabriel Ferrari (Ant-Man and the Wasp) with Josh Cooley (Toy Story 4) as director. No details on plot except "resolves around the relationship between Optimus Prime and Megatron." The film will not be part of any of the current live-action movies continuity, be it the Bay-verse or maybe/maybe part of Bay-verse Bumblebee movie. It does seem that maybe, just maybe, another one of those writer room concepts from years ago might be used.

It seems the sudden renewed interest in an animated movie is due to any live action film being years away and possibly more until Hollywood sorts out they will restart production considering most films involve hundreds of people working together and often without being able to follow social distance rules. An animated movie, for all its complexity, is sit down at a desk type work that can follow social distance rules or at least be outsourced overseas where how the rules are handled will not be considered a Hasbro/Paramount issue.

I wonder how much the IDW comics will come into play in developing the story. Wish I could remember the exact story arcs (I want to say the Autocracy Trilogy but not sure) got into the origin of then Orion Pax and Megatron's relationship. In the comics it started as friendship built on political agreement over the current government heavy handed leadership failing the people. Orion believed in using the system to fix things from within while Megatron was becoming increasingly more aggressive in believing how change need to be forced. The resulting fall out of Megatron's tactics severed the relationship and directly led to the "Great War" that eventually destroyed Cybertron and the Transformers landing on Earth. Another version of the story is being told in the IDW relaunch currently being published but exactly where its going is muddy on a good day so that seems less likely to be a source of inspiration for any movie. Whether they use IDW as inspiration or not, can't beat the potential drama of friends becoming bitter enemies on each side of a civil war that decimates a planet. Which isn't exactly kid friendly (and never forget the movies are about selling toys) so... yeah not holding my breath on that version being told but fingers crossed.

Transformers 5 and Transformers Animated Movie Get Writers

Deadline is reporting that the early results are in from the Transformers Writers room and the powers that be have decided that Akiva Goldsman will write the script for Transformers 5 while the Ant-Man writing team will take on an animated feature. The Transformers 5 script is being written on the assumption that Mark Wahlberg will star as Michael Bay as director but neither are actually signed up for TF5. As Bay tweeted, "Re: directing TF5. No, it's not official. I have not committed to any idea as of yet. Just met with Steven [Spielberg] and we are discussing." Previous interviews with Mark Walhberg indicated his interest in a sequel is highly dependent on Bay's involvement so if Bay returns, Mark returns. No Bay and Paramount is going to have to work harder to get Walhberg to return. Likely they are hoping that Akiva's script might be enough to get Bay to sign up again.