Franchise Fred News: Akiva Goldsman’s Transformers Writers Room Is Closed

Producer Lorenzo Di Bonaventura stayed a bit after the American Assassin press conference to chat with me more. I’ll save the Mitch Rapp story for September when that film releases, but as the producer of the Transformers franchise, Di Bonaventura updated me on that franchise. Akiva Goldsman headed up a writers room which developed the latest film, Transformers: The Last Knight. While a Transformers shared universe is continuing with a Bumbelbee spinoff, that writers room has ended.

“The writers room which was set up by all of us was set up to explore the mythology more,” Di Bonaventura explained. “It was set up for a few different reasons but the biggest thing that happened in it was they expanded the mythology of Transformers in a way that allowed us to go to King Arthur. There’s different areas, like we’ve examined World War II, etc.”

As for the state of the proposed Transformers extended universe, Di Bonaventura is focused on Bumblebee.

“We’re going to start Bumbelbee a week from today,” Di Bonaventura said. “We had already well intended to do that a long time ago so it’s off and running. Once we get that up and running, we can start looking at what else we’re going to do.”

While Bumblebee is set in the ‘80s, fans of The Last Knight would love to see a feature length version of Bumblebee fighting Nazis in World War II.

“You know what, that seemed to be a real favorite of people,” Di Bonaventura acknowledged.

The producer also had hopes for a new G.I. Joe film.

“I hope so,” he said. “We’ve been talking a lot about it. We have an idea of what we want to do. I’m thinking the changeover at Paramount, got a little stalled out so it’s now time to revisit that.”

American Assassin is out September 15.