Like It Or Not, Bayformers Could Be Returning

I still remember the day in the late 2000s when me and my family were renting a movie at the beach and got into a disagreement. I wanted to see Transformers, having heard good things about it. My stepdad, however, had no desire to watch a film based on a children’s toy he didn’t grow up with. I got my way, but it wasn’t what I had hoped: the next two hours were one giant dopey Axe Body Spray ad, with fratboy jokes involving giant robots and an incomprehensible plot. This kind of stuff, however, was right in my stepdad’s wheelhouse and while I didn’t enjoy myself, he sure did. A week later, the sequel came out and I didn’t want to go. He told me he had not only already bought his tickets, but bought mine, so in a sense I had contributed to its box office without participating.

Michael Bay’s bro-sweat-drenched take on Transformers would reign through five films, each with diminishing returns. It wasn’t until 2019’s Bumblebee that audiences got a taste of what the IP could be without him, and both fans and critics seemed to love it. I’m too lazy to look up who was responsible for Transformers: Rise of the Beasts but people did not like it as much; it didn’t even attract the dudebro audience the Bay films at least had baked in. The most recent film, if it counts, is the animated Transformers One which those who saw it seemed to love, but that wasn’t a lot of people. Blame a lousy marketing campaign that made the film look generic and juvenile.

So it sounds like it’s time to roll the dice with Bay again, though it’s probably going to get the same result. Not only is Bay being asked to return but Steven Spielberg has already agreed to serve as executive producer on the next film, and believe it or not, his name was on the first few (these are hardly Spielbergian films, but it’s important to note a producer and a director are two very different things). Lorenzo di Bonaventura, who’s been involved with Transformers for a long time, is also producing.

There is ONE new person involved here: Jason Fuchs, who wrote scripts for Wonder Woman and Argylle and co-created It: Welcome to Derry for HBO. It is reportedly Fuchs’ script that enticed Bay to consider returning.

Talking about a new Transformers is awkward at the moment due to the recent death of Peter Cullen, longtime voice of Optimus Prime. Cullen reprised the role in all existing Transformers movies, and performed it one final time in a bonus short that played alongside the recent re-screening of the original 1986 Transformers animated movie. Whoever they’ll get to replace him is unknown.