A long-running franchise like Transformers is heavily rooted in nostalgia, and fans will soon be able to relive the memories. While the live-action front welcomes Transformers: Rise of the Beasts on 8 June, the animated side is set to roll out a new prequel film in 2024, with a focus on exploring the origins of Optimus Prime and Megatron.
Speaking to Collider, Lorenzo di Bonaventura, producer of both projects, revealed that the untitled animated outing will tell the story of the pair’s close-as-brothers beginnings and how they eventually came to be on opposing sides.
“We debated a lot about it in live action, and it just was financially impossible to do, which is, the origin story of young Megatron and young Optimus. If you know the origin, they started as friends, and over time things devolved for them and they ended up on two sides,” he said. “So we’re telling the young Optimus and the young Megatron story. We really are telling the origin story of all Transformers, both what they were at the beginning of it, to how they grow, to how they grow apart.”
This marks the first feature-length animated Transformers film since 1986, with renowned visual effects company Industrial Light & Magic, also known as ILM, helming the animation. Founded by George Lucas in 1975, the company boasts an impressive portfolio that spans some of the biggest titles and series in Hollywood, including Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Star Trek: The Next Generation, The Mandalorian, and Loki. The team is no stranger to the Hasbro franchise either, having worked on the CGI in the live-action movies.
Delving into the technical side of the craft, Bonaventura explained why ILM is a good fit for the project. “You know, I think one of the difficulties in the past, for instance, in rendering Cybertron is, if you have to try to create the whole planet, it gets really expensive. So when you look at the intro in the beginning of Bumblebee, or in [Michael Bay’s] movies, we have different versions of it,” shared the producer.
“This thing has to be a living, breathing environment, and so we have to create an environment that is unique to Cybertron, and given the history of Primus and all the things that go behind it, we’re allowed to inhabit, if you would, the planet in a way you couldn’t do it in live-action. Thankfully, ILM is a great partner in that,” he added.
The Transformers animated prequel was first announced in 2020, and will be directed by Toy Story 4‘s Josh Cooley. The feature is slated to hit theatres on 19 July 2024, a year after the 8 June opening of Rise of the Beasts, which will introduce the Maximals, Predacons, Terracons, and more robots in disguise.
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