On Friday, a report from Transformer World suggested that the franchise may be getting a reboot without the involvement of director Micheal Bay. During the Toy Fair 2018 Investor preview, a Hasbro representative said that the “new team at Paramount will reset the Transformers Live Action Movie Series following the release of Bumblebee: The Movie.”
However, Bleeding Cool more recently reported that during an event at the Toy Fair, a spokesperson for Hasbro denied those claims. He reportedly told those in attendance, “Don’t believe what you hear, don’t worry,” in regards to reboot.
The original Transformer World report comes from a preview event for the 2018 Toy Fair, where a slate of upcoming Hasbro movies were revealed. Transformers 6 was not on the list, nor were any other Transformers movies. The list goes through 2021 with a Dungeons & Dragons movie, along with an unnamed “Paramount/Hasbro Event Film” being the only movies listed for that year. Whatever Hasbro has planned likely won’t see the light of day until 2021.
That being said, it is possible that the unnamed Hasbro/Paramount movie is a new entry in the Transformers franchise, reboot or otherwise. This would give the studio some time to handle production and work on a new script. Regardless of when the new movie arrives, we can hope it will be an improvement over Last Knight, which we considered one of the franchise’s weakest entries.
The uncertainty surrounding the future of the Transformers franchise does make a bit of sense when we look at the franchise as a whole. The series has been a critical failure and also been a fixture at several Razzies. But despite the poor critical reception, the films have been a major commercial success, collectively pulling in more than $4 billion since the original film’s 2007 debut.
Prior to the release of Transformers: Last Knight, longtime director Michael Bay announced that he was stepping away from the franchise, so it is unlikely that he will be returning for any new installments. As of right now, it is unclear who will take over, but in 2016, Hasbro brought on three new writers to help manage the expanding Hasbro-Paramount cinematic universe.
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Michael Chabon, Eisner Award-winning Brian K. Vaughan, and Guardians of the Galaxy screenwriter Nicole Perlman will be working on various Hasbro properties such as G.I. Joe and Dungeons & Dragons. It is likely that they’ll also be involved in whatever Hasbro has planned for Transformers, though nothing has been confirmed on that front.
While the future of the franchise isn’t entirely clear, the Bumblebee spin-off is still expected to release on December 21 of this year.
Updated on February 18: Added information to reflect report that Hasbro has denied working on a reboot.
