The Transformers franchise was on its last robotic legs after Michael Bay‘s last addition to the series, 2017’s The Last Knight. That film made far less money than other films in the franchise, and seemed to signal that audiences were finally sick of all the Bayhem that had been dominating most Hollywood summers for a decade.
But then the spinoff Bumblebee came along, and showed that a Transformers film didn’t have to be all bombastic action and gleeful carnage. The success of that film gave the franchise new life post-Bay, and now it’s looking to get back on track with another instalment. Paramount has tapped Creed 2 director Steven Caple Jr. to helm the next Transformers movie.
There aren’t any details on the film yet, leaving us to wonder whether the studio will continue with a family-friendly action-adventure that like Bumblebee – a direction that leaves room for more standalone stories – or if they will once again try for for something bigger and more mythologised like the Bay films.
The Bumblebee route seems to make more sense, since audiences seemed burned out by the latter option, but we’ll see. Hollywood studios have repeatedly shown they have very little idea of what audiences actually want, and have routinely stuck to doing-over the same properties even when audiences reject them
Remember when Columbia rebooted Men In Black, which failed miserably at the box office, surely signalling the end of the series, right? Only for the studio to say they’ll just try again in a few years? So it would be little surprise if Paramount went back to the old Transformers formula that initially made them a bunch of money, even if audiences have thoroughly moved past that.
The next instalment is still a ways off, so we’ll wait to hear what form the movie will take, and what actors jump on board to star alongside the alien robots.
#Peace.Love.Transformers
