'Transformers' Franchise Gets A Revamp With Two Separate Movies In The Works

Prime yourself for another onslaught of robots. Paramount and Hasbro are looking to revamp the Transformers franchise with two dual movies being developed separately. The first script is being penned by Joby Harold, who co-wrote the upcoming Zack Snyder zombie movie Army of the Dead, while the second, written by Zodiac writer James Vanderbilt, will reportedly be a reboot of Transformers: Beast Wars.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Paramount and Hasbro are looking at another Transformers reboot six years after 2014's Age of Extinction disappointed at the box office. The companies have tapped Harold and Vanderbilt to pen two separate scripts for dual Transformers movies, which will be developed concurrently.

Not much has been revealed about the scripts or the intended direction of the two projects, but they will reportedly "build out multiple arcs and to also expand the Transformers universe." It's unclear if these are competing or independent projects, but it's likely that both films will feature brand-new casts. io9 reports that one script is rumored to be set within the world of the previous films while the other is a "grand-scale reimagining." However, Deadline was able to confirm that Vanderbilt, who has been attached to the project since April 2019, may be penning a script based on Transformers: Beast Wars, a story set in the future of the "original" Transformers continuity which followed the clash of the Maximals and the Predacons, descendants of the Autobots and Decepticons, respectively.

Paramount still views Transformers as a top priority, but its approach to the future of the franchise has been divided after the critical success of 2018's Bumblebee, a sweet, small-budget coming-of-age tale that earned the highest Rotten Tomatoes rating (92%) of any Transformers movie, though it earned the least cash of all the entries at $465 million worldwide. Two of the most derided of the franchise meanwhile, 2011's Dark of the Moon (35% on Rotten Tomatoes) and 2014's Age of Extinction (18%), both made over $1.1 billion. But after the critical and commercial disappointment of the last main-series Transformers film, 2017's The Last Knight, it seems that Paramount is at a crossroads — explaining the dual scripts. In one future maybe we'll see more of the overwhelming CGI extravaganzas, and in another, a character-driven story in the vein of Bumblebee. Whatever the case, we'll be seeing plenty of Transformers in the future.