This past March brought news that Paramount, in an attempt to turn the Transformers franchise into the sort of shared universe, film-generating concept that has worked out so well for Marvel, would be hiring a team of writers to work with Akiva Goldsman on new robo-projects. Deadline today brings word that the first batch has made a deal, with Robert Kirkman, Art Marcum and Matt Holloway, Zak Penn and Jeff Pinkner are all reportedly involved.
While Goldsman himself doesn’t plan to write any of the screenplays, he is overseeing a writers' room that will operate much like those on most US TV series, where the stories are figured out as a group before individuals (or teams) go off to write the actual scripts.
All the new hires have genre credits, though we’d have thought Kirkman would have enough to do working on the hugely successful TV adaptation of his Walking Dead comic and its new spin-off, Fear The Walking Dead. Marcum and Holloway contributed to the first Iron Man and wrote Punisher: War Zone. Penn has been on board the likes of X2, Elektra, X-Men: The Last Stand, **The Incredible Hulk **and has a story credit on Avengers Assemble. And Pinkner is a veteran of Lost and Fringe and co-wrote the script for The Amazing Spider-Man 2. Their task will be to brainstorm and either write or assign future sequels and potential spin-offs, such as one about the Autobots' leader's struggle with maths in his Cybertron school, Optimus Prime Numbers.
The next main entry in the Transformers franchise is currently scheduled for 2017, though veteran director Michael Bay might hand over the keys to Optimus and co. this time.