New Details on Animated ILM Transformers Movie, Release Date

This year brings Transformers: Rise of the Beasts but next year has another movie set for release with a Transformers animated movie aiming for release on July 19, 2024 and directed by Josh Cooley (Toy Story 4). Lorenzo di Bonaventura, producer on the Transformers franchise since the first Bay film, spoke with Collider about the film providing some information on the story.

The key takeaways from the interview with di Bonaventura is the film is set entirely on Cybertron, will explore the "origin story of young Megatron and young Optimus" and how their friendship shifted into war. He also described as "the origin story of of all Transformers" which he later elaborated on saying " origins of the society, and what broke it apart." The story is such that they can do a "natural trilogy" if the first film is successful enough. As for why an animated movie, he said " If you tried to make this live-action, it would probably be a billion-dollar movie or something." The key quote on story is below.

"You're going to see a lot of the origins of the society, and what broke it apart. The analogy for me is a bit like Krypton when you saw the planet falling apart, and all that. We're not there for a short time, we're there the entire time of the movie, we're on Cybertron, but we are in the challenge that, if you know the lore, they begin to question the hierarchy of how their society has gotten stratified, and how the common man doesn't have the voice, entirely, that they want to have. We're following very true to the origin story of it, and so it's really fun, too, because I've gotten to see some of it – it's not fully executed by any stretch of the imagination, but hearing Optimus and Megatron not as who we know them as, which we see their maturation in this experience. So, in a sense, you're hearing a different character because you're hearing them before they have matured."

Until this movie, the only place you could really get an origin story for Autobots vs Decepticons (called the Great War) that has been central to the franchise is the IDW comics books. Even then, that origin is so spread out, told in bits and pieces over the years that is difficult to have a cohesive story. The origin was also restarted when IDW relaunched the comics franchise in 2019. I tried to write a summary but its pretty complicated. The very short version is the planet's Autobot leadership became corrupted by the upper class and through some events declared planetwide martial law. Orion Pax and Megatron worked together to eventually overthrow it as the abuses mounted. As a result of all the Autobot corruption he had to wade through (including killing two Primes), Megatron decided only he should lead the planet instead of Optimus Prime, who was anointed as leader by the true Matrix of Leadership. I suspect a movie version will cut through the complexity and focus on the rise of Megatron and reluctant leader Orion Pax who joins his cause against the corrupt government with difference in leadership styles and morality playing a huge part in how they eventually become enemies.

Update: Collider posted a little bit more of their interview with di Bonaventura where he revealed, "I'm not sure if I'm supposed to divulge it, but I'm going to. ILM is doing the animation." Industrial Light & Magic got its start on the Star Wars films and is more or less responsible for nearly every single visual effects breakthrough used in movies (including the previous Transformers films) so what they do with Transformers should be amazing. As far as quality, I believe the last animated film they did was Rango which they won an Oscar for.