Transformers: Rise of the Beasts Director Teases Predacons

Fans of the classic Beast Wars: Transformers animated series got a major announcement today when Paramount Pictures confirmed that the next film in the blockbuster franchise will be heavily influenced by the show and include some of its characters. In addition to heroic animal/robots like Optimus Primal and Rhinox, the evil Predacons (a portmanteau of Predator and Decepticon) will also play a part in the new movie, whose official title is Transformers: Rise of the Beasts. Speaking during the Paramount preview presentation, director Steven Caple Jr. opened up about the inclusion of the Predacons in the film, who will be featured in addition to the Terrorcons as the antagonists.

"The difference between the sort of Predacons in our film, they are more reptilian in nature. So to speak, you've seen a few in the other Transformers films, they've been like here and there, but we never got a chance to really focus in on their logo. So to speak. Their insignia, I really identify them with, to Lorenzo's point their tribe, if you will. And so we're really hitting that more. And then we get to see another side to them. Again, it's all about sort of like building a backstory to these characters."

He continued, "That's a little bit more than, 'Hey, let's take over the world. What is their personal agenda? What are the feelings behind it? And so we'll get the seed of that. You can't really make a movie about Beast Wars and not have the classic characters."

Producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura added, "And the Predacons are the natural enemy, if you would, of the Maximals. So in a sense, you have the natural enemies of the Predacons and the Beasts, and then you have the Terracons and the Autobots and we get to pair everybody up against each other. So it becomes a, a grand finale of epic Transformer experiences."

It's unclear which members of the Predacons will appear in the upcoming movie but some popular characters could be Scorponok (a robot Scorpion), Waspinator (surprsingly, a Wasp-robot), Quickstrike (a scorpion/cobra hybrid robot), and naturally the Beast Wars version of Megatron, who was a Tyrannosaurus Rex in the series and later a dragon. The film won't be just Beast Wars characters though as the classic G1 Optimus Prime, Bumblebee, and more were also confirmed.

Transformers: Rise of the Beasts is set in 1994 and will serve as a spiritual successor to 2018's Bumblebee. It's currently scheduled to hit theaters on June 24, 2022.