Paramount may give Bumblebee a ‘Transformers’ spin-off movie
Fans have loved Transformers movies, making it a “cash cow” for Paramount and now they look to expand the franchise, even giving Bumblebee his own movie. That’s right, a new report points to the yellow robot moving from constant sidekick to a starring role.
Paramount is assembling a writing team for Transformers sequels and spin-offs, with the first one meant to be ready by the time Michael Bay finishes his Benghazi movie.
There is the rumored Cybertron/origin movie, but there’s now talk of a Bumblebee spin-off movie, with the info coming directly from the CEO of Hasbro.
TFW2005 points out that, at the Global Consumer Conference 2015, Hasbro CEO Brian Goldner said,
Many of you know Bumblebee; the yellow Camaro… formally known as a yellow VW Bug and he is a beloved character by kids all over the world. We could see stories told around Bumblebee and other characters. We are in a process of building the brand equity around the Comic Book Business, our TV Business, our Digital Gaming Business and adding to that our new movie business of Transformers.
While that isn’t “a Bumblebee spin-off movie is coming,” it does suggest that the general awareness for that character could help him to a starring position in one of the spin-off efforts.
Goldner continued,
Last year was Transformers 4. It was quite a good success for us last year. We’ve begun to work with writers and we are now developing the Transformers [Cinematic] Universe beyond the first four movies.
Paramount has Akiva Goldsman running the Transformers writer’s room, which features some big names: Andrew Barrer, and Gabriel Ferrari (Ant-Man production rewriters), Robert Kirkman (The Walking Dead), Art Marcum and Matt Holloway (Iron Man), Zak Penn (Pacific Rim 2), and Jeff Pinkner (Lost). (Though there is one report that says Paramount is trying to hire at least one woman to work on the series.)
