Whether the idea of further visits to the Transformers movie universe has you cheering or plotting a way to leave the planet, their continuation is guaranteed. And now we know that in addition to next year's fifth main installment, two more movies have been dated, including a Bumblebee spin-off in 2018.
Nothing beyond the subject and the date of the Bumblebee film has been released, but word arrived via that most mundane of movie channels, an investor conference call from someone described as the "Transformers franchise leader" at Hasbro, who quite honestly sounds more like the antagonist for the next movie. We suppose it makes sense to focus on Bumblebee, who has been one of the focal points of the movies, despite his reliance on radio bursts for dialogue.
It's all been generated by Paramount and Hasbro convening a Transformers writing room that gathered a number of scribes together under the direction of Akiva Goldsman. They've generated concepts for other movies and are assigning scripts, with Art Marcum, Matt Holloway and Black Hawk Down's Ken Nolan at work on the fifth Transformers for Michael Bay to direct, due in June next year. That means Paramount is currently going head to head with Warner Bros.' Wonder Woman. Bumblebee, meanwhile, is taking aim at Legendary's Godzilla sequel in June 2018. Finally, another, unknown Transformers (possibly another main story entry, or the proposed Cybertron-set origin story probably not directed by Bay) in late June 2019.