The New TRANSFORMERS Animated Film Is an Origin Story Set on Cybertron That Could Launch a Trilogy

Paramount Pictures is developing a new untitled animated Transformers movie that is coming to theaters in 2024, and we have lots of new details to share with you thanks to franchise producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura.

The movie is being helmed by Toy Story 4 director Josh Cooley, and it sounds like it’s going to be an epic story that will deliver an origin story for the planet Cybertron and all of the Transformers. This is a story that I’ve always been interested in seeing brought to life and it’s exciting to learn that this new animated movie is going to dive into it!

During a recent interview with Collider, Bonaventura was asked about the film being set on Cybertron and he revealed that it will tell the story of a young Optimus Prime and Megatron:

"I could tell you really important parts of this story, which is more than a tease. This is something we were trying to do; we debated a lot about it in live action, and it just was financially impossible to do, which is, the origin story of young Megatron and young Optimus. If you know the origin, they started as friends, and over time things devolved for them and they ended up on two sides. So we're telling the young Optimus and the young Megatron story. We really are telling the origin story of all Transformers, both what they were at the beginning of it, to how they grow, to how they grow apart."

The producer goes on to say he thinks that this story will set up a "natural trilogy" that he wants to tell and there are other films already being planned. He explained:

"We’re hoping that there is enough emotional construct to that, that would lead to a trilogy of it because, personally, I think there's a natural trilogy. I'm not always looking to do multiple movies, but there's a natural trilogy around their relationship. So, you're going to see Cybertron in a way you've never seen it, that no one's ever seen it before. Because we're doing an animation, we're allowed to really go all out. If you tried to make this live-action, it would probably be a billion-dollar movie or something."

This seriously sounds like it could be awesome! The more information he reveals the more excited I get! He goes on to compare the fall of Cybertron to Superman and the destruction of Krypton. He also says the versions of Optimus and Megatron that we meet in this movie will be different than how we’ve come to know them over the years:

"You're going to see a lot of the origins of the society, and what broke it apart. The analogy for me is a bit like Krypton when you saw the planet falling apart, and all that. We're not there for a short time, we're there the entire time of the movie, we're on Cybertron, but we are in the challenge that, if you know the lore, they begin to question the hierarchy of how their society has gotten stratified, and how the common man doesn't have the voice, entirely, that they want to have. We're following very true to the origin story of it, and so it's really fun, too, because I've gotten to see some of it – it's not fully executed by any stretch of the imagination, but hearing Optimus and Megatron not as who we know them as, which we see their maturation in this experience. So, in a sense, you're hearing a different character because you're hearing them before they have matured."

While the movie is an origin story, it won’t be a “coming-of-age” story, di Bonaventura explains saying:

"It's not a coming-of-age story. I don't think you’d believe that, in a way, but I would say they're young men who are finding their path. Like I said, it's more than a tease, that's what the story is, and that's the experience you're going to go through. And how they question society, just like all of us, too, could question our society. We’re maybe not as strong as Megatron and Optimus, so maybe we wouldn't make the same choices, but I think it's really going to be an eye-opener for the fans. For the non-fans, you're going to get to meet the characters in their early formation."

As for how this next Transformers animated movie could spawn a trilogy, the producer talked about how that would work saying:

"I would say this, we don't spend a lot of time thinking about two and three because it's always hard to do one well. But there is a natural trilogy coming out of this friendship where you can see the divisions and the possible attractions to each other, and why that should play out over three movies, is very natural. So we have a good sense in the broadest terms, but in the broadest terms, we know what the second movie would be about and the third movie would be about through the eyes of what this relationship's going through. So the exact plotting, we haven't worked on that, but how that relationship evolves, devolves, evolves, devolves, all that stuff, that's what's going to drive it if we get lucky, if the first one's a success."

The script for the movie was written by Andrew Barrer and Gabriel Ferrari, who previously worked on Marvel’s Ant-Man and Ant-Man and the Wasp. Cooley is overseeing a final draft of the script with the writers now.

There’s a chance that this movie could seriously be awesome. I can’t wait to see what it looks like visually!