Just how big is Paramount planning to expand their Transformers movie franchise? If we're judging by the size their "writer's room", they're planning to go massive with this thing. Akiva Goldsman has already put together a braintrust that includes Robert Kirkman (The Walking Dead), Art Marcum and Matt Holloway (Iron Man), Jeff Pinkner (Fringe), Zak Penn (X-Men: The Last Stand), Andrew Barrer & Gabriel Ferrari (Ant-Man), “Black List” scribe Christina Hodson, and Lindsey Beer. Now you can add screenwriter Ken Nolan (Black Hawk Down) to the pool, and judging by Goldsman's comments to Deadline all of this firepower may be necessary.
“We’ve got a work space that is beautifully production designed to be immersive with a strong sense of the franchise history. 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… If one of the writers discovers an affinity for ‘Beast Wars,’ they can drive forward on treatments that will have been fleshed out by the whole room.”
Basically, if Hasbro thinks they can sell a buttload of toys they'll make a movie out of it. Beast Wars puts a twist on the Autobot/Decepticon war by having them able to transform into savage creatures or animals rather than vehicles. Personally, I never saw the appeal since some Transformers can become creatures, anyway.
With the fifth Transformers film targeted for 2017, likely directed by Michael Bay again, we've begun to hear rumors about other projects comprising this expanded universe. There has been talk of a Cybertron-set origin story, plus a solo film centered on Bumblebee.
