There is now reason to give a care about Paramount's Transformers cinematic universe. Travis Knight, CEO and President of Laika and director of Oscar-nominated Kubo and the Two Strings, will next take on the Bumblebee spinoff, according to Deadline. As the head of Laika, Knight has also been a creative force behind The Boxtrolls, ParaNorman, and Coraline.
This is exciting for a lot of reasons, but think about this for a second. The reason why Laika's so popular (even if they aren't box office successful) is they've been able to capture emotion within their stop-motion animated films like nobody else before them. Think about what someone like Knight, whose scored two Oscar nominations for 'Kubo', can do with the visual effects budget he'll be afforded on a Transformers movie. The results could be extraordinary. Or the studio system will chew him up and spit him out. We'll just have to wait and see.
For now, Bumblebee opens on June 8th 2018 which would put it up against Godzilla: King of the Monsters. Somebody's got to blink.
