Back in March, it was revealed that Paramount Pictures is taking a unique approach to their lucrativeTransformersfranchise, putting together awriters roomthat will come up with ideas forTransformers 5and other future sequels and spinoffs. The writers room is lead byAkiva Goldsmanand includesSteven S. DeKnight(Daredevil),Robert Kirkman(The Walking Dead),Art Marcum&Matt Holloway(Iron Man),Zak Penn(Pacific Rim 2),Jeff Pinkner(The Amazing Spider-Man 2),Andrew BarrerandGabriel Ferrari(Ant-Man),Christina Hodson,Lindsey Beer,Ken NolanandGeneva Robertson-Dorsett. While promoting the new season ofDaredevilat the TCA press tour,Steven S. DeKnightrevealed what it was like to work with these other writers, confirming thatTransformers 5will be written byAkiva GoldsmanandJeff Pinkner.
“It’s that wonderful thing where features are now taking a page from television and getting people together to really try and plan things out. It was a wonderful experience.Akiva Goldsmanwas fantastic andJeff Pinkner, who’s co-writing the fifth [Transformers] movie with him was phenomenal.Zak Penn… It was just a room full of brilliant, funny, amazing people. And we spent two and a half weeks in physically the best writers room I’ve ever seen in my life. Paramount pulled out all the stops. It was phenomenal! We laughed and joked and told stories and plotted out.”
Each of these writers was to develop a pitch for their ownTransformersmovie, but it isn’t clear yet which project will move forward afterTransformers 5.Michael Baywill return to direct, after he wraps up work on his Benghazi thriller13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi, which just released itsfirst trailerearlier this week. Unfortunately,Steven S. DeKnightwouldn’t divulge any specific plot details, but he did talk about the day thatSteven Spielbergcame by to watch them work.
“I can’t say what we plotted out, but it was all very exciting and in the next few months we’ll see what moves forward and what doesn’t move forward. But it was a fantastic experience. One of the best experiences of that was whenSteven Spielbergpopped by one afternoon to just sit and talk and hear what we were working on. Everybody was about to throw up, they were so excited.”
This “writers room” approach to movie franchises has become quite trendy.James Cameronput together a similar collective of writers for hisAvatarsequel writers, and Universal is taking a similar approach with theirUniversal Monster Shared Universefranchise, which is being shepherded byAlex KurtzmanandChris Morgan. When asked how this approach may change things for futureTransformersmovies,Steven S. DeKnighthad this to say.
“It remains to be seen. I think the biggest thing something like that does when you’re dealing with a franchise that is so global and makes so much money is actually taking a moment to really think things out. Because a lot of the times, you go into production, you don’t have a finished script or your script is still being worked on. And it’s very difficult to work that way. I can’t imagine… Especially with the second movie, when the writers strike happened andMichael Bayhad to start prepping anyway, I can’t imagine trying to prep a movie of that size and complexity and not having a locked script. And it happens all the time in movies. You just have to start because of people’s availabilities. So my hats off to Paramount for trying something new in this way and really giving this writers room thing a spin. But for me, it was a fantastic experience. I loved it.”
