What the Transformers franchise has lacked in critical acclaim, it’s more than made up for at the box office. 2007’s Transformers was a monster hit, and was followed by sequels of variable quality but that all made a bunch of money. With the release of The Last Knight in 2017 though, it seemed that the brakes might be put on the series.
The film underperformed at the box office, with many concluding that now might be the right time to reboot and retool the franchise. Then Bumblebee came out late last year, and its success proved that there might still be some life in the old dog yet.
Producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura recently spoke to Japanese outlet Cinema about where the Autobots and Decepticons are going next and certainly feels that there’s a lot more story to tell, explaining the following:
“We are already working on two projects and both have scripts under development. One is the latest in the main family series following the events of Transformers: The Last Knight and the other is a sequel to Bumblebee. So, we are thinking of films where Optimus Prime and Bumblebee will be the buddies, but when Optimus and Bumblebee are the movies of the protagonists … how human beings get involved in their drama In the first place, the size is different between human beings and their’s …. It’s a worrying point (laughs).
Uh, I think something might have gotten lost in translation there, but the important bit is that The Last Knight will get a sequel. That film had one of the most insane and hard to follow plots I’ve ever seen in a summer blockbuster, mixing together Arthurian mythology, a robot butler, Anthony Hopkins happily chewing scenery and a climax that was almost Dadaist in how difficult to follow it was. I think the Moon might have been destroyed at one point, but it’s difficult to tell.
It also remains to be seen whether Michael Bay will return to the franchise. On one hand, he’s indicated that he’s run out of things to say on the subject of alien robots that can turn into cars, but on the other, it’d just be weird to see a mainline Transformers film without his maximalist touch.
