Transformers: Rise Of The Beasts Delayed One Year, New Star Trek Movie Coming In 2023

Big news out of Paramount today. The highly-anticipated next installment of the "Transformers" series, "Transformers: Rise of the Beasts," will no longer open on June 24, 2022, and will instead be pushed back almost a full year to June 9, 2023. Directed by Steven Caple Jr. ("The Land," "Creed II"), "Transformers: Rise of the Beasts" stars Anthony Ramos, Dominique Fishback, Luna Lauren Valez, and features Peter Cullen as Optimus Prime and Ron Perlman as Optimus Primal. The film is set in the 1990s and was said to be getting close to the end of principal photography, with production shooting in Brooklyn and Peru. The film is inspired by the ultra-popular 1990s animated series, "Beast Wars: Transformers."

In another huge announcement, the new "Star Trek" movie in development with Matt Shakman is no longer due to premiere on June 9, 2023. Instead, it's being pushed for a holiday release of December 22, 2023. It is still a mystery as to who will star in the new "Trek" film, as neither Chris Pine, who played Captain Kirk in the three J. J. Abrams/Justin Lin "Star Trek" films from 2009-2016 nor any of his castmates have been confirmed to return. Abrams will be producing the currently unnamed "Star Trek" film.

There hasn't been any official word on why the delays are taking place, other than the fact that the new "Star Trek" movie is being pushed in order to accommodate the needs of "Rise of the Beasts." Without the additional delay, the films would be released too close to one another and cause internal competition for the two Paramount blockbusters. Now, this puts "Rise of the Beasts" up against an untitled Sony-Marvel blockbuster, and fortunately for "Star Trek," with the news that "Star Wars: Rogue Squadron" is also experiencing delays, the film will not be competing with the Disney tentpole.

"Rise of the Beasts" had wrapped production in October 2021, so it's odd that the film is being delayed by a full year as everything seemed to be right on schedule for the 2022 summer release. However, there's been such a massive backlog of blockbuster movies thanks to everything about 2020, studios have been juggling release dates so as to not get slaughtered by each other at the box office. After Disney moved its Marvel film schedule a few weeks ago, it seemed to start a butterfly effect that has caused a shift for all of the major releases across all of the major studios. More than likely, there's nothing wrong with either the "Transformers" or "Star Trek" productions, and Paramount is just looking ahead to keep their multi-million dollar projects away from the competition.