Back in March of this year, it was announced that Akiva Goldsman would be overseeing a TV-style writers' room to come up with new concepts for a potential **Transformers film shared universe. At the time, the emphasis was on him running the room and not writing a script himself, but he’s apparently found a concept he likes enough to start bashing out words for the fifth outing of the robo-franchise.
And that’s not the only film to come out of the room, which has now finished its session. Ant-Man on-set writers Andrew Barrer are Gabriel Ferrari are engaged in working on an untitled animated film that will serve as a prequel set on the Autobots and Decepticons’ home planet of Cybertron and explore the characters’ history only briefly touched on in the movies to date.
The writers’ room, which was set up on the Paramount studio lot, included creative types from a range of previous projects on big and small screens including Ken Nolan, Christina Hodson, Lindsey Beer, Robert Kirkman, Art Marcum, Matt Holloway, Zak Penn, Jeff Pinkner, Steven DeKnight and Geneva Robertson-Dworet. According to Deadline, they together generated nine ideas, which they turned into treatments and pitched to the Transformers producing team including Steven Spielberg, Michael Bay (director of all the movies to date), Brian Goldner, Lorenzo di Bonaventura, Mark Vahradian and Don Murphy. While several didn’t show enough potential to go any further, five are now in some form of development, with Goldsman tackling the next main instalment, Barrer and Ferrari on the animated film, then Pinkner and Beer on their own scripts and another to be announced.
But while the report mentions Michael Bay and Mark Wahlberg back for more Transformers madness, Bay hit twitter to counter the idea that he’s automatically aboard, which makes it sounds like negotiations are still ongoing.
Re: directing TF5. No, it's not official. I have not committed to any idea as of yet. Just met with Steven and we are discussing. > > — Michael Bay (@michaelbay) [September 17, 2015](https://twitter.com/michaelbay/status/644622092110032896)
The biggest plan is for all the ideas to go into a Transformers bible that can be used by future writers and directors to keep the stories consistent. Because that’s what was always the most carefully considered element of the movies so far: the plots. Paramount is looking to have the next film shooting in June 2016.