Transformers: The Last Knight Villain Revealed

It's starting. This week production. Megatron is back. #transformers #decepticons#

A video posted by Michael Bay (@michaelbay) on May 31, 2016 at 9:59am PDT

The villain of Transformers: The Last Knight was revealed Tuesday afternoon by Producer/Director Michael Bay. Megatron will return to the series after his apparent death and transformation in a previous film. Bay announced the film is officially beginning production this week.

In Transformers: Dark of the Moon, the third film in the series, Megatron tried to restore Cybertron, and take over Earth. Optimus Prime wasn't having it, though, and took the Decepticons leader's head off with his axe. Megatron's head kept the evil 'bot alive, though, and in Age of Extinction, he went into the Galvatron body. Returning as Megatron is no small feat - he'll need to restore his entire previous body to do it.

Transformers: The Last Knight had a teaser over the weekend that said in Morse code, "I'm coming for you May 31," and apparently that message was being sent by Megatron. The movie will be the first to come out of Paramount's new writers room for the Transformers franchise, that featured writers like Akiva Goldsman, Christina Hodson, Robert Kirkman, Zak Penn, Jeff Pinkner, and more. Bay returns to direct the film, which he says will be his last in production. He's been revealing information on his instagram account slowly this month. In the latest teaser, Megatron's face is accompanied by a strange guttural growling sound, not unlike what's been used for dinosaurs in other films.

The film is due out on June 23, 2017, a date previously held by Warner Bros.' Wonder Woman live-action film, which bumped its release up by a few weeks in response. It's the first of three films, including a Bumblebee spin-off and a proper Transformers 6 that came out of the writers room. With Optimus Prime heading into space at the end of Extinction, Bumblebee will be the leader of the Autobots on Earth at the start of this film.