The Bayhem will return to Transformers. In one of the first big moves of the Skydance era at Paramount, the team is bringing back Steven Spielberg to oversee development on a new Transformers movie, with Michael Bay in talks to once again direct.
They, along with producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura, were among the core creatives involved with Transformers becoming a live-action smash back in 2007. Now reunited, the aim is for them to “guide this new chapter to honor the spirit of the early Transformers films,” according to Deadline, which broke the news.
No story details are available, but the film will be set in the present day and is from a script by Jason Fuchs (It: Welcome to Derry). Apparently, Paramount executives were hopeful to bring both Spielberg and Bay back into the mix, and it was Fuchs’ script that attracted them both back.
The news comes days after we learned a proposed crossover between Transformers and G.I. Joe had been shelved. When we last saw the Transformers on the big screen (in live action), in Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, that team-up was teased at the end of the movie. But, alas, no. It seems they’ll be going back to basics. Instead, we’re similarly getting a rebooted G.I. Joe too, directed by Danny McBride, starring Bradley Cooper.
This also comes mere months after Peter Cullen, the iconic voice of Optimus Prime, passed away. And, assuming this film stars Optimus Prime as most Transformers movies do, it’ll be interesting to see how the team deals with that.
While the Transformers franchise has certainly been less successful on the big screen since Bay’s days (he made the first five live-action movies), we hope he and the producers look at what fans have loved about the subsequent films. The opening of Bumblebee, for example, which showed a war on the planet Cybertron. That film also had a more personal, focused story. There’s also character-driven work in the animated Transformers One, which wasn’t dependent on humans. We don’t know if any of this will be taken into account, but if Bay is returning and Spielberg is in charge, our fingers are crossed.
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