Paramount, Michael Bay, Steven Spielberg, Lorenzo di Bonaventura, Mark Vahradian, Hasbro’s Brian Goldner and Akiva Goldsman have put together a writers room for a shared universe of Transformers movies.
The writers on board include newly announced Ken Nolan and Geneva Robertson-Dworet who join Christina Hodson, Lindsey Beer, Ant-Man writers Andrew Barrer and Gabriel Ferrari, The Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman, Iron Man scribes Art Marcum and Matt Holloway, Pacific Rim 2‘s Zak Penn and Amazing Spider-Man 2 and Lost’s Jeff Pinkner.
Now Goldmsman has shared some of the Transformers plans, with mention that a Beast Wars movie would even be possible.
“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,” Goldsman told Deadline.
The first order of business for the writers room is coming up with an idea and script for the fifth Transformers movie, which will be directed by Michael Bay. It’s reported Paramount wants the script ready when Bay is done with his latest movie 13 Hours.
Goldsman also offered the following details in regards to the writers room Transformers process:
“I got a taste of this from JJ Abrams when I came in to write an episode of Fringe, and then Jeff Pinkner let me hang around for four years like the drunk uncle. The whole process of the story room was really delightful, and we are seeing it more in movies as this moves toward serialized storytelling. There are good rooms around town, including the Monsters Room at Universal, the Star Wars room, and of course, at Marvel. We’re trying to beg, borrow and steal from the best of them, and gathered a group of folks interested in developing and broadening this franchise. There is a central corridor of movies that has been proceeding quite well, but our challenge will be to answer, where do we go from here?”
“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.”
“It just felt like such fertile ground and a rich environment for storytelling, and there has already been thoughtful work done long before any of us came into the room. We will be innovative miners, and we will have fun and get to do what we imagined this was all about when we were kids.”
