'Transformers: War For Cybertron' Animated Series Will Explore The Origins Of The Autobot And Decepticon Battle
When Bumblebee hit theaters towards the end of last year, one of the most exhilarating sequences for fans of the original Transformers was finally seeing Cybertron in all its wartorn glory. Helping that sequence stand out was an assembly of Autobots and Decepticons with their G1 character designs intact. There have been rumors of an animated movie tackling Cybertron at some point, but it sounds like a new animated series from Netflix and Hasbro might get there first.
Variety reports Netflix and Hasbro are teaming with Rooster Teeth for Transformers: War for Cybertron, an animated series that will dive into the origins of the ongoing battle between Autobots and Decepticons. FJ DeSanto (Transformers: Titans Return, Transformers: Power of the Primes) will act as showrunner on the series, which is slated to arrive sometime in 2020.
Netflix's John Derderian, director of anime programming at the streaming service, said:
"In this Transformers origin story, we will explore the expansive universe of Cybertron in a way that audiences have never seen before — to the delight of both existing fans and those coming to the franchise for the first time."
The series will be written by more Transformers veterans with Gavin Hignight (Transformers: Cyberverse), Brandon Easton (Transformers: Rescue Bots) and George Krstic (Megas XLR) on the team of contributing writers.
The animation will be done by Polygon Pictures, the same company behind the recent Godzilla anime style projects available on Netflix. Considering that producers are touting this Tranfsormers animated series as having a totally "new animation look and style," we wouldn't be surprised if they were bringing the same anime sensibilities to Transformers. You can see what they did with Godzilla here:
If you're a little confused by the title Transformers: War for Cybertron being followed by "trilogy" in the key art for the series, that's just the designation given to a new line of toys from Hasbro that will inform the series. There might end up being a three season arc for the series, but it's not exactly like a film trilogy. The title also allows for any comics, cartoons or other possible media to be easily reocgnized under the same story banner.
The question is whether this will have any impact on any possible plans for Paramount Pictures to make their own animated Cybertron movie. The last update we heard had Ant-Man screenwriters Andrew Barrer and Gabriel Ferrari were tackling the project meant to dive into the origins of Transformers. But we haven't heard anything since then. We're not sure if the movie was meant to exist in the same universe of the live-action movies or become something else entirely. We'll have to wait and see if there's any progress on the film while we wait for this new animated series at Netflix