Goldsman Explains Transformers Writers Room as More Join

Deadline is reporting that another two writers have joined the Transformers Cinematic Universe Writers Room as the group is now at an even dozen. The new additions are Ken Nolan (Black Hawk Down) and Geneva Robertson-Dworet. The TF Writers Dozen will be meeting this coming Monday as team leader Akiva Goldsman explained.

Goldsman said the intention was to replicate the great writers rooms used in hatching TV shows. “There is such reciprocity between TV and movies now, that we’re borrowing this from TV,” Goldsman said. “I got a taste of this from JJ Abrams when I came in to write an episode of Fringe, and then Jeff Pinkner let me hang around for four years like the drunk uncle. The whole process of the story room was really delightful, and we are seeing it more in movies as this moves toward serialized storytelling. There are good rooms around town, including the Monsters Room at Universal, the Star Wars room, and of course, at Marvel. We’re trying to beg, borrow and steal from the best of them, and gathered a group of folks interested in developing and broadening this franchise. There is a central corridor of movies that has been proceeding quite well, but our challenge will be to answer, where do we go from here?”

“We’ve got a work space that is beautifully production designed to be immersive with a strong sense of the franchise history,” he said. “We will look at the toys, the TV shows, the merchandise, everything that has been generated by Hasbro, from popular to forgotten iterations, and establish a mythological time line. It has been designed with a lot of visual help, toys, robots, sketches and writers and artists. After that super saturation, the writers will figure out not one, but numerous films that will extend the universe.”

All of the writers will come away with this exercise with a movie treatment to write, including Goldsman. Those writers will then have first crack at writing the scripts for treatment that meet the approval of Paramount, Bay, Spielberg, Hasbro and the producers. “If one of the writers discovers an affinity for Beast Wars, they can drive forward on treatments that will have been fleshed out by the whole room,” Goldsman said.

“It just felt like such fertile ground and a rich environment for storytelling, and there has already been thoughtful work done long before any of us came into the room,” Goldsman said. “We will be innovative miners, and we will have fun and get to do what we imagined this was all about when we were kids.”

It is nice that Goldsman isn't doing a DC where they bend over backwards to delude themselves into thinking they are not copying others to a degree that becomes detrimental to the Cinematic Universe they are trying to create. Also good to hear that everything is on the table and they are not necessarily just trying to build on the Michael Bay movies but might actually go off in their own direction. It should be interesting to learn what ideas stick around to become treatment (like a rough outline) that might eventually become a full script that then could get approved to become movies. Suffice it to say Monday is the start of a long process that will continue for the next year or so at least. Thanks to Wynton R. for the link.