Hasbo / eOne & Paramount Unveil Transformers Origin Story As Feature Film, But Animated?!

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Hasbo / eOne and Paramount Unveil Transformers Origin Story As Feature Film, But Animated?!

Deadline reports.

      Animated ‘Transformers’ Prequel Activated; ‘Toy Story 4’s Josh Cooley To Direct For Hasbro/eOne & Paramount…

      …Hasbro’s entertainment studio eOne and Paramount have quietly hired Josh Cooley — fresh off winning a Best Animated Film Oscar for Toy Story 4 — to direct a big-scale Transformers theatrical prequel that sources said focuses on an origin story. It takes place on Cybertron, the planet from which the good-guy and bad-guy robots came. The film revolves around the relationship between Optimus Prime and Megatron.

      The script was written by Andrew Barrer & Gabriel Ferrari, the scribes who did production work on Ant-Man and were the credited writers on Ant-Man and the Wasp. Hasbro/eOne is running point on the production of this film.

      The film is separate and apart from the live-action Transformers film series and the Bumblebee spinoff, and those movies continue on a fast track. But as studios take stock of restarting production, it is becoming clear that making a big-scale animated feature is easier than a live-action tentpole because so much of the work can be done while respecting social distancing. That is an issue in the acceleration of the Transformers animated film. Cooley is overseeing a final draft with the writers now.

      Those scribes have been working on the animated film for several years, going back to when they joined a writers room meant to expand the Transformers universe.

      Producers are expected to be Lorenzo di Bonaventura, Mark Vahradian and Hasbro/eOne.

      Cooley is repped by Grandview, CAA and Jackoway Austen Tyerman. Barrer & Ferrari are with 3 Arts and Felker Toczek.

Cool.

John is a long-time pop culture fan, comics historian, and blogger. He is currently the Editor-in-Chief at Comics Nexus. Prior to being EIC he has produced several column series including DEMYTHIFY, NEAR MINT MEMORIES and the ONE FAN'S TRIALS at the Nexus plus a stint at Bleeding Cool producing the COMICS REALISM column. As BabosScribe, John is active on his twitter account, his facebook page, his instagram feed and welcomes any and all feedback. Bring it on!