Deadline reports that with parent company Skybound’s acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery completed, Paramount is forging ahead with the next live-action Transformers movie, which Michael Bay is set to return to direct. The site also says Steven Spielberg, who has been an executive producer on all the films since the first live-action entry from 2007, will have a larger creative role on the movie, which is being written by Jason Fuchs (It: Welcome to Derry).
Spielberg, 79, is widely seen as being the person who made the first Bay film more well-received than its sequels, having told writers John Rogers, Roberto Orci & Alex Kurtzman to approach it as the coming-of-age story of “a boy and his car.” Regardless of reviews, the average gross of Bay’s five live-action films from 2007 to 2017 dwarfed the subsequent entries Bumblebee, Rise of the Beasts, and 2024’s animated origin story Transformers One, which presumably left Paramount desperate for him to return.
Bay himself has not directed a narrative film since 2022’s Ambulance, and has complained he has been unable to get anything greenlit lately. The director, who reportedly received eight percent of royalties from the films’ toys and merchandise sales, most recently directed the parkour documentary We Are Storror, which premiered at the 2025 South by Southwest Film & TV Festival, but still hasn’t received a wide release yet.
It’s unclear what the plot of the new film could be, although Deadline states it will be set in the present day, unlike the ’80s-set Bumblebee, or ’90s-set Rise of the Beasts. Given Bay’s movies didn’t concern themselves with coherent plotting, continuity, or consistent worldbuilding (an aspect the subsequent movies didn’t bother with either, in fairness), it’s unlikely to matter, and probably may as well be a reboot like Danny McBride‘s upcoming G.I. Joe movie.
It’ll mark the first film since the death of Peter Cullen, who voiced Optimus Prime in all of the live-action entries, earlier this year. Bay himself has publicly expressed hatred of generative AI, calling it “lazy,” indicating he could recast the role instead of resorting to recreating his voice. Cullen reprised the role for a final time in Optimus Prime: Awakening, a short film attached to last month’s 40th anniversary rerelease of the animated Transformers: The Movie, which’ll arrive on Blu-ray on November 17.
