Kill Me Now: Paramount Planning TRANSFORMERS Cinematic Universe
I wanted to like the Transformers movies. The first one wasn't terrible when it came out (but it doesn't hold up very well), the second one was completely incoherent, the third one had enough well-shot bombastic action scenes to sort of pull me back in, but the fourth was such a flaming pile of crap that I swore off all Michael Bay-directed entries from now on. I've been stung too many times. I knew the series wasn't going anywhere — aside from Mission: Impossible, it's Paramount's only true cash cow right now — but I hoped, naively it turns out, that someone else would step in and take the franchise in a new direction, and maybe give it a story and characters that people actually care about.
But now that hope has been dashed on the rocks of reality. Deadline reports that the studio is negotiating with Batman & Robin writer Akiva Goldsman to work with Bay and executive producers Steven Spielberg and Lorenzo di Bonaventura to form a Transformers brain trust of writers who will create a new cinematic universe with sequels and spinoffs, similar to what Disney is doing with Marvel and Star Wars. Goldsman is technically not expected to be writing any of these upcoming movies, but it seems as if he'll be coming up with the story ideas and other writers will be putting them down on the page. Great. That's just perfect.
Bay has his Benghazi film 13 Hours up next, but he's expected to return to direct Transformers 5 after he wraps production on that. If all goes according to plan, the next Transformers movie, similar to Paramount's upcoming Terminator Genisys, will set up a multi-film arc. And with the staggering sums of money the studio must be paying him to come back to direct these films (plus the "one for them, one for me mentality" that was the reason behind Pain & Gain, Bay's only good movie of the past decade), we can expect that he'll keep coming back for more, ensuring less coherent storytelling and more explosions moving forward.
Honestly, it's tough to blame Paramount for a move like this. Hollywood is all about trends, and the trend right now it to give everything under the sun its own cinematic universe. When a studio only has one or two major money-making properties (and an edict from on high to increase their film output, as is the case here), it makes sense that they'd go all-in on what they have and hope for the best. But even though this will likely turn into a win for the studio overall (these movies make serious bank overseas), this has to be seen as a sad day for anyone who cares about blockbuster movies.