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A final final update on Akiva Goldsman's writers' room for the Paramount Transformers cinematic Universe comes once more from Deadline, reporting the addition of another writer to the pool: Steven DeKnight, creator of the Spartacus TV series, and showrunner for the recent Marvel Daredevil.
There are also misreadings being posted online claiming that we are about to see at least ten new Transformers films. According to the interview with Goldsman, which we reported here, and can be found in full on Deadline here, the trust will pitch more or less a script each, making it 12 potential stories that Paramount, Michael Bay and producers can (not will) develop into the continuation of the live-action franchise. But what about you? What would you like to see on the screen? Read through the articles, and let us know your thoughts in the Energon Pub!
EXCLUSIVE: Paramount Pictures, Michael Bay, Steven Spielberg and Hasbro started its writers room to hatch Transformers sequels, spinoffs and prequels, and they’ve added the final member of the brain trust. It’s Steven DeKnight, creator of the Starz series Spartacus, and the showrunner on the first season of Marvel’s Daredevil for Netflix.
While not really a piece of news on the new Paramount Transformers movies, fellow Seibertronian and voice actor jON3.0 has pointed us towards an intriguing crossover robot cameo in another franchise which Michael Bay has had some influence over: according to several Instagram users who were present on set in NY for a scene in the upcoming Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2, a small, homemade transforming Bumblebee costume shows up to high-five Michelangelo during a Halloween parade. Check out the reports below, via ComicBook.com.
Several days ago, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 was filming a Halloween parade in New York City. During the scene, a person dressed as a yellow vehicle rolls up on Michelangelo (played by Noel Fisher) and then transforms into Bumblebee.
We have another update from Deadline on the Paramount Transformers Universe Writers' Room, with two new additions to this seemingly unstoppable team of creators: Ken Nolan and Geneva Robertson-Dworet. The new additions have some nice credentials to them, and Akiva Goldsman claims this is also the end of the line-up for the group so far - as they will start writing and brainstorming this coming Monday! Read more about them and Goldsman's statements below, and the full piece here.
Ken Nolan and Geneva Robertson-Dworet have been set to join the group of writers who, starting Monday, will gather in an office on the Paramount lot to hatch the next iterations of the billion-dollar Transformers franchise. Nolan is best known for Black Hawk Down and Fox recently acquired his spec adaptation of the Robert Littell Cold War novel Defection, this after Nolan turned his novel The Company into a limited TNT series. Robertson-Dworet, who co-wrote the Black List script Hibernation, is writing a space thriller for Roland Emmerich that will be directed by his longtime DP Anna Foerster. She is also teamed with Will Frank on a sci-fi action thriller for Jerry Bruckheimer and a psychological thriller for Bad Robot that’s produced by The Imitation Game‘s Ido Ostrowsky and Nora Grossman.
[...]
When they start Monday, Goldsman and the writers will immerse themselves in everything that has been crafted by Hasbro to create what Goldsman said is a deep mythology. “We’ve got a work space that is beautifully production designed to be immersive with a strong sense of the franchise history,” he said. “We will look at the toys, the TV shows, the merchandise, everything that has been generated by Hasbro, from popular to forgotten iterations, and establish a mythological time line. It has been designed with a lot of visual help, toys, robots, sketches and writers and artists. After that super saturation, the writers will figure out not one, but numerous films that will extend the universe.”
We have some more news on the Paramount plans to expand the Transformers cinematic universe, thanks once more to media and entertainment website Deadline: Christina Hodson and Lindsey Beer were just announced as joining the ever-growing writers' room headed by Akiva Goldsman. Read on more here and below to find out what these latest additions can bring to the potential projects!
Paramount Pictures and Michael Bay have added the first two female screenwriters to the brain trust of writers who’ll hatch Transformers sequels, prequels and spinoffs under the supervision of Akiva Goldsman. Christina Hodson and Lindsey Beer have both joined the group that will help craft ideas to expand the universe of the Hasbro toy line, then go off and write them. Hodson most recently got hired to write a new version of The Fugitive for Warner Bros and producer Arnold Kopelson. She previously scripted the spec The Eden Project, which Sony bought for Material Pictures, and her script Shut In just wrapped with Naomi Watts starring and BAFTA-winner Farren Blackburn directing for Lava Bear and Europacorp. The CAA and Kaplan/Perrone-repped scribe also scripted Unforgettable for Warner Bros and is developing a pilot for FX. She has hit the Black List with her scripts three different times.
WME-repped Beer writes in multiple genres, but most frequently comedy and fantasy drama. She has several features set up around town, including a live-action family adventure story at Disney called Dig, which she sold on spec with Whitaker Entertainment producing. She did work on Short Circuit for The Weinstein Company and her rated-R genre-bending comedy How To Nail An Alien is being developed at Atlas, and her script Electric is also with Whitaker. She’s currently working on a re-imagined The Wizard Of Oz for Warner Bros. with Vertigo. Black Label Media is producing and financing her project Sierra Burgess Is A Loser. Beer is the daughter of Sundance co-founder Gary Beer, and has the necessary background if Paramount wants to blind them with science in these Transformers films: she studied neuroscience and the intersection of technology and society at Stanford.
Let's put it this way: this is not news. But it is entertaining, enlightening, fits easily with our recent contributor piece of the Top Ten G1 Episodes and the existence and presence on Seibertron.com for many adult collectors. From the YouTube channel series Kids React.., and via fellow user Sabrblade, we have a six minute clip of kids no older than 12 being shown the G1 Transformers for the first time, and comparisons with some of the Paramount/Michael Bay designs and some facts from the franchise.
Some of the kids make great points about the sellable value of the repurposing of the franchise, its appeal to multiple generations, and the effect it could have on the different generations - plus this one: "I think they [G1] could still be cool today, but now that we've been exposed to the movies.. the movies look so different, and that's what we're used to!"
Warning: It'll make a lot of people feel old. For real.
The final wave of Age Of Extinction toys have been online only, so far, and for high prices since it's a single pack each of the Power Battlers Vehicon and Junkheap. It seems that's about to change, however, because the Vehicon has been sighted at close out retail store Ross!
Fellow fan and collector Andres Cova found the Vehicon at his local Ross store and provided visual proof of his find, including the price, which is $5.99
Hasbro recently attended the 2015 Global Consumer conference, in New York, and made the webcast available to media outlets - we took the 40 minutes out of our schedule to listen through it and pick out all the Transformers highlights from Brian Goldner, Hasbro CEO.
While the talk included several of the brands under Hasbro's control, from Star Wars to My Little Pony to various Disney franchise brands, Transformers was picked upon a number of times, and there was some news from upcoming Transformers toylines and entertainment, and the addition of an Animatronic toyline, with nothing more really mentioned (and may not be Transformers related) planned for the future. But the bigger news comes from the segment on the movie front of the franchise, and their current plans for the brand - including a mention of Bumblebee so small that it apparently makes the news all over the internet. Make of it what you will, below.
Last year was Transformers 4. Which happened in the second quarter and was quite a good success for us last year. We've begun to work with writers and we are now developing the Transformers Universe beyond the first four movies. And we are continuing to have Television on the air with Cartoon Network where Transformers is performing quite well through the first quarter coming off of a movie year.
As we go forward, we would imagine several more Transformers Movies. Not just in the current lineage but also spin-offs and focusing on certain key characters that loved the world over. Many of you know Bumblebee; the yellow Camaro, formerly known as a yellow VW Bug and he is a beloved character by kids all over the world. We could see stories told around Bumblebee and other characters.
We are in a process of building a brand equity around the Comic Book Business, our TV Business, our Digital Gaming Business and adding to that our new movie business of Transformers.
From the same source as the last big piece of news for the Paramount Transformers franchise, Deadline, we have a very rumorous rumour, and please take it as such until there is any confirmation whatsoever. It appears that the current writers (post-Edgar Wright) for Marvel's upcoming Ant-Man movie, Andrew Barrer and Gabriel Ferrari, have joined the writers' room for the expanded universe - and may be behind a prequel project by the name of Transformers One - set on Cybertron. Read more here or below, and sound off your speculations on this hearsay piece of information!
Andrew Barrer & Gabriel Ferrari, who spent half a year doing the production rewriting on Marvel’s Ant-Man, have become the latest to join the Writer’s Room that Paramount Pictures and director Michael Bay have organized to hatch sequels, prequels and spinoffs on their billion dollar Transformers franchise. I’m hearing that one of the ideas in the works has a working title of Transformers One, and that it is more or less an origins story that takes place on Cybertron, the planet where the good guy and bad guy robots hail from. Those talks originated with rights holder Hasbro. I’d also heard that this might be an animated feature, but that Barrer & Ferrari are also going to the writer’s room with the expectation they’ll write a live action Transformers movie, as well. Paramount insiders said that they haven’t gotten that far on the specific projects, but I am told this is the plan. A Cybertron movie sounds like fertile ground for a feature, to me.
Via a number of sources, but traced back to movie dedicated website Deadline, there are reports coming in of a new batch of script writers for the expanded Transformers cinematic universe (under Paramount's aegis). Standing out from the reports is the presumed involvement of The Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman, Pacific Rim's Zak Penn, Iron Man's Art Marcum & Matt Holloway and The Amazing Spider-Man 2 and Lost's Jeff Pinkner. That's quite the bunch right there - but what do you make of the announcement? Let us know in the Energon Pub!
EXCLUSIVE: Two months after Paramount and the Transformers brain trust of Michael Bay, Steven Spielberg and Lorenzo di Bonaventura picked Akiva Goldsman to incubate ideas for a multi-part sequel and spinoff films based on the billion-dollar franchise, they have finalized their “writers room.” And it’s a doozy.
Goldsman’s four-team roster features some of the top names in sci-fi, I’ve learned: Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman, Iron Man scribes Art Marcum & Matt Holloway, Pacific Rim 2‘s Zak Penn and Amazing Spider-Man 2 and Lost‘s Jeff Pinkner. I’m hearing the ink isn’t even dry on the deals, but that is a major-league lineup to join Goldsman, who is spearheading it all for the studio, Hasbro, Spielberg and Bay (Bay and Goldsman were college buddies at Wesleyan). More writers will be added.
This is a major priority for new Motion Picture Group President Marc Evans, who’s tasked with getting more movies made. It marks an intriguing new step as studios put even more of a premium on the care and feeding of tentpole franchises, as is the case with James Cameron’s Avatar sequels and Disney’s process for developing its Marvel tentpoles.
For all the Transformers movieverse fans out there, some good news from Amazon Prime! The online retailer's premium section is adding a bunch of movies to their streaming service, and the list includes the latest Paramount/Michael Bay output - Age of Extinction - as of June 13th. Check out the full list below to see what else is available, too.
Amazon has released its lineup of movies and TV shows that will be available for streaming come June 2015. During those hot summer days, Amazon Prime members will be able to enjoy titles like "Transformers: Age of Extinction," "The Shining," "Lucky Number Slevin" and Season 5 of "Covert Affairs."
Amazon Prime titles
June 1
"The Shining"
"Roman Holiday"
"Apocalypse Now"
"Apocalypse Now Redux"
"Something Wild" (1986)
"Sid & Nancy"
"Sucker Punch"
"Troll"
"Troll 2"
"Rep: The Genetic Opera"
"The Island of Dr. Moreau"
"Seven Psychopaths"
"The Paper Chase"
"People Will Talk"
"Far From Home: The Adventures of Yellow Dog"
"Murder of a Cat"
"Nine Months"
"Word and Pictures"
June 12
"Life of Crime"
June 13
"Transformers: Age of Extinction"
June 15
"Leprechaun: Origins"
June 19
"A Most Wanted Man"
June 22
"Lucky Number Slevin"
June 24
"Covert Affairs," Season 5
June 26
"Katy Perry: The Prismatic World Tour"
June 27
"The Mist"
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