Steven Spielberg Is Returning To Produce One Of The Biggest Movie Franchises In Hollywood History
Steven Spielberg is returning to the Transformers franchise in a significantly expanded role, stepping up from executive producer to overseeing all creative aspects of Transformers 8 alongside longtime franchise producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura. Spielberg has served as executive producer on every live-action Transformers film since the 2007 original, which he helped launch by selecting Michael Bay as director, but his involvement in subsequent installments became less hands-on as the series continued. The new chapter represents a deliberate return to the creative control he exercised at the franchise's beginning, with Paramount and the newly merged Skydance studio backing the effort. The screenplay for the eighth film is being written by Jason Fuchs, who also wrote Wonder Woman and the upcoming IT: Welcome to Derry, and is set in the modern day. All other plot details are being kept under wraps. Significantly, Shia LaBeouf, who starred in the first three films as Sam Witwicky, will not be returning, and no casting decisions have been made at this stage of development.
The other major development attached to the announcement is that Michael Bay, who directed the first five Transformers films before departing the franchise in 2017, is in early talks to return as director for the eighth installment. Bay's departure came after Transformers: The Last Knight underperformed critically and commercially, and the subsequent films moved in a different creative direction without him. The stated intent of Spielberg and di Bonaventura is to recapture the tone of the earlier films, particularly the first two, which together grossed more than $2.5 billion at the global box office and established the franchise as one of the biggest action film series in cinema history. The seven live-action Transformers films have collectively earned more than $5.4 billion worldwide, making the property one of the most commercially successful movie franchises ever produced. A separate planned crossover with G.I. Joe has been cancelled as part of the new strategy, with Paramount instead developing a standalone G.I. Joe film in collaboration with Danny McBride. Spielberg is 79 years old. He has spent almost two decades tied to this franchise in one capacity or another. He is now taking the wheel himself.
