Big ‘Transformers’ Movie Planned, Optimus Prime Spinoff a Possibility

Bumblebee is set to kick-start an entirely new era of the Transformers franchise, and it sounds like that could take some interesting shapes in the future.

In a recent interview with CinePop, Bumblebee producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura was asked what the future of the Transformers movies could have in store, and whether or not a spinoff centered around Optimus Prime could be in the cards.

“We hope so.” Di Bonaventura explained. “Optimus Prime is a tricky one, because he’s so wise and smart, that it’s hard to decide how you can create an emotional story.”

Bumblebee, which takes a decidedly smaller-scale approach to the war between the Autobots and the Decepticons, has already made some theorize about a potential Optimus Prime spinoff. But even if that might not be immediately in the cards for the franchise, it sounds like a larger film involving the beloved roster of characters is a definite possibility.

“Yeah, we’re also going to do a big Transformers movie as well,” Di Bonaventura revealed.

Di Bonaventura has expressed a similar sort of sentiment in the past, hinting that the franchise isn’t necessarily being “rebooted”, but is taking a decidedly different tone.

“Reboot, I always hate that word because for one, I’m not sure I really understand what it means,” Di Bonaventura said in a previous interview. “We are going to do another big Transformers movie. It is going to be different than the ones that we’ve done before.”

“It’s not like we look at the elements of what we did before and go, ‘Well, let’s not do this’ or ‘Let’s not do that,’” Di Bonaventura explained. “It’s more about how do you evolve the experience for the fans. Let the fan have a new experience. When we did the first movie, at first there was a lot of pushback that we weren’t doing it the way it was done before,” he added. “My feeling was always that if we’d done it, you would’ve gone, ‘Well, I’ve already seen it.’ So how do you evolve things forward is I think the hardest thing because you’ve got to retain why people love it, but at the same time if you give them the same experience, they’re going to be bored with it.”

“I think we’ve learned something in this movie about tone that I would think the next big Transformers movie is going to have,” Di Bonaventura added. “It’s not like we’re going to copy it but we’ve learned something. There’s more freedom than I think we originally thought in terms of what we can do.”

Are you excited to see what the Transformers franchise has in store? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!

Bumblebee is in theaters now.