Jumping on the franchise bandwagon a la the Marvel Cinematic Universe and ‘Star Wars’, Paramount has set out to build more than just a string of movies around ‘Transformers’. When it was earlier announced that they had scheduled movies for release every year through 2019, the immediate assumption was that these would be the fifth, sixth and seventh movies in the existing series, but now it appears that like ‘Star Wars’, the studio plans to alternate between regular ‘Transformers’ movies and spinoffs and the first has been confirmed to be 2018’s entry which is a solo outing for arguably the most popular Robot In Disguise Bumblebee.
Via an investor conference call for this weekend’s Toy Fair in New York City, Hasbro’s Transformers franchise leader Tom Warner clarified:
“This summer we worked closely with a talented team of A-list screenwriters to map out the future of the Transformers cinematic universe, and as Brian announced earlier, things kick off in a major way in 2017 with the release of Transformers 5 in June. And we’re working on a spin-off movie centered around Bumblebee for 2018 and the next chapter for 2019.”
With the major studios scheduling their tentpole releases years in advance, most of the prime release dates are already occupied by big event films. This didn’t stop Paramount who simply picked dates that were already claimed to throw their mighty robot films against. For ‘Transformers 5’, the studio chose June 23, 2017, the same date Warner Brothers has ‘Wonder Woman’ opening. And for ‘Bumblebee’, Paramount picked June 8, 2018, the same day as Legendary’s reboot of ‘Godzilla’.
Obviously we have no idea about the motive behind these selections. It’s entirely possibly it was just a matter of all the good dates being taken and Paramount choosing which movies it thinks ‘Transformers’ could possibly best. While ‘Godzilla’ is a tricky venture, having already experienced lackluster reboot attempts, ‘Wonder Woman’ might be a tougher opponent.
Then again, the ‘Transformers’ movies are an anomaly. Universally panned, they seem to get worse and worse with each installment, yet their financial performance keeps getting better, so they clearly know something most of us don’t.
No information is known about ‘Bumblebee’ yet (or whatever it winds up being entitled, probably something like ‘The Transformers Saga Presents: Bumblebee’). We do know that ‘Transformers 5’ features a script by Art Marcum & Matt Holloway and Ken Nolan and will be directed by Michael Bay (his last in the franchise, he says) and will star Mark Wahlberg who headlined the last one, ‘Age of Extinction’.
Are you excited to see a new ‘Transformers’ every year for the the near future? What do you think of a solo Bumblebee movie? Sound off in the comments below!
Source: Coming Soon
