With Marvel Studios and Warner Bros. planing to keep churning out super hero movies for the next decade or so, it looks like the heroes of both cinematic universes will have some company, with Hasbro Studio’s president Stephen Davis announcing their plans at the MIPJunior conference (via TFW2005) in Cannes to continue the Transformers franchise through to 2025. As well as the already announced Transformers 5 and an animated origin movie, Davis revealed that Hasbro’s Writer’s Room, which includes Akiva Goldsman (Angels and Demons), Robert Kirkman (creator of The Walking Dead comic book), Jeff Pinker (Fringe, Lost), Zak Penn (The Incredible Hulk), and Steven DeKinght (showrunner on Netflix’s Daredevil), has generated ideas for parts 6,7, and 8 of the franchise. You can read what he had to say below:
Well, you’re gonna see a new Transformers movie coming from Hasbro and Paramount and Michael Bay and our other partners. In fact, we just finished, which some of you may have read, just an incredible experience. We decided that we wanted to plot out the next 10 years of the Transformers franchise and so we got together in a room over a three-month period of time. Nine of some of the most creative writers I have ever worked with, shepherded by Akiva Goldsman, who many of you may know won an Academy Award for A Beautiful Mind and written a bunch of really great movies, and they plotted out the next 10 years of Transformers. Similarly, we’re doing the same in television and in digital. So stay tuned, Transformers 5 is on its way, and 6 and 7 and 8.”
Say what you will about the Transformers movies, with the last two both clearing the billion dollar mark worldwide it has proved itself to be very profitable franchise for Hasbro and Paramount. With the creation of the Writer’s Room, there was always going to be more sequels (5 was a given, seeing as how Age of Extinction ended) but ten more years seems like overkill. These movies don’t review well, but that really doesn’t matter with the money they earn. But is this type of expansion too much? Will audiences flock in the same numbers to the same CGI extravaganza for decade? The superhero genre sustains itself (for the time being at least) because of how varied it is. Transformers doesn’t have that, so it’s easy to see audiences getting sick of seeing the same giant robots transform into the same vehicles pretty quickly.
