Film after film, Transformers was proving
to be Paramount's most powerful franchise.
I think that's listed as one of the fan favorites. It's right up there.
The franchise had been so successful,
made a lot of money.
Fueled by the AllSpark.
You hold the key to Earth's survival.
We are here looking for the AllSpark.
And a good amount of Bayhem.
You're going the wrong way, the other way, other way.
Lift 'em up again. Do it again, do it again. Keep rolling.
The Transformers universe
appeared to be taking over the world.
That Chinese market was super duper aware
of American films, and it wanted its hunk of it.
But the fifth film would take a medieval turn.
Charge!
Like, what?
But in spite of its hefty budget
would be a blunder at the Box Office.
It was a lot of movie, I think, for two hours.
Nothing in that film was really good,
nothing really landed.
Hey, so, are we nearing the end of the road with this thing?
The Box Office spoke for it.
The ratings spoke for it. The fans spoke for it.
To make matters worse,
old rumors about Michael Bay resurfaced...
I think when we did the last one,
I think we sensed that,
that was going to be the last one for Michael.
I heard him saying he wasn't gonna do it.
You know, you say that sometimes
when you are sick and tired of it.
...that this time might actually be true.
He's like, "Hey, just here's the reins
and you know, continue on with this amazing franchise."
In 2017, Transformers: The Last Knight
was a flop.
You've gotta be kidding me.
Nothing in that film was really good.
Very mean.
The Box Office spoke for it.
The ratings spoke for it. The fans spoke for it.
It's awful.
It seemed that the sun had set
on a franchise that Hasbro had hoped would go the distance.
And I thought that the fourth one
was going to be the last.
Nope. Prior to its release, Paramount announced
The Last Knight along with two more films,
and for that we can really thank Marvel.
I am Iron Man.
The Marvel universe spurs on
the Transformers universe to keep creating new movies.
And Marvel had created a lot of movies.
Marvel sort of exploded and did five gazillion films.
And in turn, Paramount was eager
to make a gazillion Transformers movies.
Are we talking about an invasion?
Their worst fears
were about to become a reality,
what once were rumors now appeared to be true,
rumors no studio exec wants to hear.
They heard him saying he wasn't gonna do it.
You say that sometimes when you are sick and tired of it.
Do you think I'm joking all the time?
It seemed Transformers
was preparing to roll out
without the father of the franchise.
Well, I think when we did the last one,
I think we sensed that,
that was going to be the last one for Michael.
Maybe a bit of fatigue,
maybe you need a new voice coming in,
and maybe it was exhaustion on our part.
After more than a decade
and five blockbuster films,
Michael Bay was stepping away from the director's chair.
He's on that movie for years, start to finish
and he's probably tired of seeing robots after a while too.
Just when Paramount was gearing up
for more Transformers--
- Roll out. - We roll.
The Transformers machine
appeared to be powering down.
Losing Michael Bay was a huge blow for Paramount.
Here's this blockbuster director
that basically created the universe
and helmed the franchise to success at the Box Office.
He is gone now, there's a creative vacuum,
and remember, Paramount just announced
there's going to be more films.
So there was no going back now,
Paramount was all in with at least two more films,
but before they could hire a new director.
They needed a script.
Your world will be reborn.
Paramount had said,
we're going to have just a bunch of writers come in
and do round tables.
Paramount brought in some real heavy hitters.
Spearheaded by Oscar winner, Akiva Goldsman.
There was Walking Dead's Robert Kurtman,
and Black Hawk Down screenwriter, Ken Nolan,
who consequently wrote The Last Knight.
Hey, you know there's a reward for turning you in?
- Really? - Yeah.
Cool, you wanna get punched in the face really hard?
No.
These were the more well-established writers in the room,
but there were some up and coming talent as well.
Fresh ideas are always good for a franchise.
You need a lot of ideas.
Throw everything at the wall, see what sticks.
And some of the freshest and stickiest ideas
came from one of the least established writers.
Christina Hodson, after having her script,
The Eden Project included on the Black List,
was invited to Paramount's Writer's Room.
You could say Christina's story was a bit
of a departure from the typical Transformers spectacle.
A little story that seemed
to dovetail nicely with one of the littlest Autobots
in the Transformers universe.
- Bumblebee. - Bumblebee.
He's so fun.
To me, he's the coolest of them all.
I love Bumblebee.
He was always the one that was
directly connected to the humans
and so that's what made him special.
And he was little, he always had a big heart.
The script would serve as the prequel
to the Transformers TV show set in the 1980s,
and a return to the core narrative
that executive producer Steven Spielberg
had envisioned since the beginning of the franchise.
During the writing process,
Spielberg encouraged Christina to create more
of a coming of age film instead of
a straight up action film.
He really compared it more to E.T. in spirit.
Good.
But instead of being about a boy and his alien...
It's a story about a boy and his car.
...this time it would be about a girl and her car.
Well, an alien car, to be precise.
No, I'm good thanks.
I love the fact that Christina Hodson
based the character on her nieces.
And the script is, it's not all about robots fighting.
Oh my God.
I equate it to making almost Pretty in Pink
with Transformers.
Well, I'm the only one that comes in here.
I don't even know how they're still open.
The Bumblebee script was really a departure
from the Transformers universe.
It was smaller in scope, it was personal,
it was really a fresh idea,
but it was a risk for the studio.
A risk Paramount would be taking
without veteran director Michael Bay.
Oh, what we would all give to have Prime back right now.
Bay was across every aspect
of the first five films,
from casting to filming to editing, but now--
He's like, "Here's the reins,
and continue on with this amazing franchise."
It's madness.
Those are just big shoes to fill.
Luckily Michael Bay
would stay on as a producer,
but it was veteran Transformers producer,
Lorenzo di Bonaventura,
who on top of his many other responsibilities,
had the tough task of finding
a new director for Bumblebee.
Lorenzo had worked with Michael on the previous
Transformers movies and was a huge admirer of his.
But the script for Bumblebee
with this coming of age story
didn't call for the Michael Bay typical explosions
within the explosions style that he's known for.
The script for Bumblebee needed a director
adept at helming a character-driven movie
with an emotional core,
and there was one film that caught the eye
of di Bonaventura and Spielberg.
Well, hello, Kubo.
Kubo and the Two Strings
is about a boy who has magical powers,
that goes on a quest to find
his late father's magical armor.
It's a sweet little film about self-discovery,
family, and the power of storytelling.
And it was directed by Travis Knight.
Travis, the son of Nike founder, Phil Knight,
took an early interest in stop motion animation
and quickly rose up the ranks of Will Vinton Studios,
a company his father invested in,
and later rebranded as Laika.
Rumors were that he was kind of a rich kid
and had somehow got this job.
But the rumors were laid to rest
when the Travis Knight directed Kubo
earned an Oscar nomination for the studio.
Show off.
Travis brought a lot of heart to that film.
It was very personal, warm, intimate.
It was a coming of age story,
and that's exactly what he pitched to di Bonaventura,
an emotionally resonant center to Bumblebee
which was right in line with the studio's vision.
Like me?
Yes, strong, and clever, and funny,
and oh so handsome.
Di Bonaventura wanted Bumblebee's story
to be character driven and contained but not small,
Travis agreed and they made a deal.
With the film's director hired,
di Bonaventura turned his attention
to landing a different type of director,
director of photography, Enrique Chediak.
Lorenzo called me and said,
"I have a movie that you might like."
But I was a little bit reluctant
to go into the Transformers world.
And then I asked my agent, "Who is director?"
And he said, "Travis Knight,"
which two weeks before I saw Kubo
with my daughter, and we loved it.
I met Travis, and we hit it off.
And Lorenzo was very adamant that I do the movie,
so, I ended up working on Transformers.
Lorenzo had his man.
We've been looking for you for so long.
And his man's right-hand man.
But the young director would face an uphill battle.
Michael has done such a great job,
those are just big shoes to fill.
He would be doing it with half the budget.
You want to think that, oh, Transformers, big budget,
ILM, must have had the money.
Everything was pretty tight.
Fledgling director, Travis Knight,
was taking over the Transformers franchise
from a director so synonymous
with creating the universe...
Action!
...it was named after him.
The Bay verse.
Hand tasked with re-imagining
a beloved character, and a theme.
It's a story about a boy and his car.
That Bay had driven to Box Office success.
- Oh my God. - Trust me,
he's a kick-ass driver.
But now Knight would have to do it
with a sum that paled in comparison to his predecessors.
They're 200 plus.
The Last Knight's budget was 217 million
to be exact.
So how would Travis step out of the long shadow
cast by Michael Bay, and transform Transformers
into something of his own?
And Travis needed to find a lead
with an it factor of her own.
I'm the person for it.
With a Golden Globe nomination at 17
and a standout performance in True Grit.
Look here, I need a pony,
and I'll pay $10 for one of them.
Hailee Steinfeld was the perfect choice.
It made me feel like there was gonna be
more to the movie than we'd seen before
because of that particular casting choice.
You know, she's only gotten bigger,
she was big then, and has only gotten bigger.
Gross, Ron.
There is a vulnerability that she's a girl
that has a lot of issues with her mother.
So I'm sorry if that makes things harder,
but in 10 months from now,
you won't even have to deal with me.
And suddenly what brings happiness
and joy to her life is Bumblebee.
With their lead locked in,
Knight turns to a very different kind of star,
someone who could bring both menace and muscle.
I think coming from the wrestling world,
I think he just comes from hard work.
So he would always be on set,
he would never go back to his trailer.
I always remember that.
He'd sit on set until he was up,
you don't always see that.
That's not a bad day at the office.
And standing beside John,
as head of sector seven, General Whalen was.
Emmy award-winning actor, Glynn Turman,
and let that cover it all, okay?
John, what I liked about his work ethic was that
as staunch as he was, he didn't want it to be so serious.
Just stop.
We all kind of took our lead
where the tone of the movie was,
and this is a movie that's about fun.
Have you lost your damn mind?
With the human cast in place,
how would Travis set himself apart from Bay
and make his mark on the Transformers themselves?
I have an idea.
It's always a risk if you're gonna take something
that has a very established visual language
and kind of change it.
Michael Bay was the key person
developing the Camaro Bumblebee for the first movie,
but I have no idea why he didn't want to use the VW.
But Travis did want to use the VW.
What?
No longer a Camaro.
The yellow Beetle, I want it.
Bold plan was reviving the look of G1 in a time
when old Beetles were a teenager's first car.
Oh my God, thank you so much. I love you.
Casting Bumblebee as a Volkswagen Beetle
was a stroke of genius, honestly.
Remember, this is a prequel,
so it needs to have this 80s sort of aesthetic to it.
The car itself looks more approachable, looks more friendly,
looks more relatable and human.
You still in there?
Bumblebee was definitely awesome as a Camaro,
and he was the cool kid, but you know what?
Bumblebee as a bug was a little more like a lot of us
as we were growing up.
Like, I was a VW Beetle more than I was a Camaro.
So how would the new director's approach
differ from his predecessor?
You know, there's a whole chapter in here
about how people who smile more often
actually have more friends.
They're very different styles.
Michael's a bit more bombastic,
he expected more intuition.
Travis knows what he wants and he tells you.
And we're working on some of
the different battle masks for him, what it could be like.
He replied in an email, "These are just horrible.
These are just the worst."
That was it.
Relying less on Bay verse-style spectacle,
the production had to find a way
to make intimate scenes more realistic.
Travis is a very hands-on, very practically minded guy
who would use CG when it needs to be CG, and I loved that.
I mean, he's the owner of Laika Animation.
He's an animator who animates with stop motion puppets.
We commissioned the upper torso of that character,
practically made and practically painted.
I think somewhere behind me I've got
the sample yellow spheres of the pristine paint
and the banged up paint.
It was great.
With Bumblebee now practically assembled,
the voiceless little bugger needed a way to communicate.
Do you speak?
Luckily, the production had a secret weapon.
I am the Idaho state champion pantomime.
Optimus Mime.
Is there a nerdier thing to win?
But it's all in the little things he does with his body
and the way he moves his face.
It has to be so expressive.
He's gotta say everything.
For even more inspiration,
Jason took off his black and white shirt,
to black and white cinema from Hollywood's silent era.
We looked at Charlie Chaplin,
we looked at Buster Keaton,
'cause they had no other recourse either.
They had no voice.
They had to make it all work with their face.
Are you scared?
It's all in the eyes.
When Bay was directing,
the actors couldn't even see the Transformers' eyes.
Trust me, I said.
He made a 16-foot fiberglass scale of Bumblebee
that was mostly just beneficial for camera blocking
and to showcase how massive in scale he was from the movies.
Knight's practical Bumblebee
had large expressive light up eyes.
He was smaller, rounder, more approachable.
It made him more human.
I don't know what he is, but he's my friend,
A friend and an acting partner.
This practical approach really helped
with the performances as well,
particularly with actors like Hailee Steinfeld
who had to have more intimate scenes with Bumblebee.
The relationship felt more real and genuine.
Thank you for...
...making me feel like me again.
Hailee Steinfeld is such an amazing actress,
when you put her opposite the robot,
she brought it to life.
From practical robots,
production turned their attention
to practical locations in Northern California.
One of the big references was the 80s.
He was looking for a house.
So we went to look, and look,
and look for a lot of locations and we didn't find anything.
So we found an empty spot close to San Francisco.
So we built the exterior of the house in the garage
in this beautiful location,
and we built the house and the garage in the studio as well.
Hmm, that looks familiar.
Yes, a lot of Amblin references,
a lot of Amblin references.
But would Travis stick to the script?
Travis, I think, wanted to do his own thing.
Enrique was doing most of the work.
He didn't know what a live action movie is like.
Or would he and Lorenzo
wind up on different pages?
Travis wanted more the relationship movie
and Lorenzo wanted more the action movie.
Bumblebee Director, Travis Knight,
was stepping into big shoes.
Those are big shoes to fill,
like, you're taking over a franchise of a guy that,
I mean, just knows it.
Although Michael Bay had stepped away
from the director's chair for Bumblebee,
he stepped up as a producer,
and the crew fully expected another Bayhem production.
Michael has done such a great job
and I had went in there thinking,
"Oh man, this is gonna even be bigger."
Well...
Let's do this.
It was really the opposite.
And the opposite approach
was apparent right from the opening scene.
Well, I'd come up with all these crazy ideas,
jumping and all this authentic action.
You gotta make it bigger, it's gotta be cool,
but it's gotta be cooler than the last.
Sounds Transformery.
And he didn't want any of that. He was like,
"No, we're not going, we're not going that big."
Travis, I think, wanted to do his own thing.
The comparisons to Michael Bay were inevitable,
but Travis had no option but to be, well, Travis,
and doing his own thing meant falling back
on his experience as an animator.
Travis was completely different speed.
Everything was very meticulous.
Animation is just a different animal.
I mean, they're doing everything frame by frame,
but it's very mapped out,
it's almost over mapped out.
While Travis worked with the actors,
longtime Bay collaborator, di Bonaventura,
would have to keep an eagle eye on everything.
He was always at every production meeting,
he was very hands-on.
He's every day on the set.
He's every day giving notes.
He's every day meeting with the writers.
Because Lorenzo is not doing that to Bay,
there's a different dynamic, you know what I mean?
And even though Lorenzo hired Travis
to direct an intimate coming of age story.
Travis wanted more the relationship movie.
He was beginning to question
whether the film had all the right ingredients
for the Transformers franchise.
Lorenzo wanted a little bit more of the
Transformers fights, the action movie.
Action versus intimacy,
director versus producer.
And you can also feel the excitement of Travis
when he was with the robot and the girl.
And he was a little less excited
when he was doing the big things,
and Lorenzo was super excited.
I didn't do much with Travis at all.
The big battle at the end was a big dry dock area.
It was a lot of stuff with the helicopter,
and Enrique was doing most of the work.
Were Lorenzo and Travis
coming apart at the seams?
There was always on the set that thing that you can feel.
But it speaks a lot that Lorenzo hired Travis.
It was two aspects of Bumblebee,
one was the relationship between the girl and the robot,
and the other one was saving the world,
there was a balance.
Travis and Lorenzo, they reached a nice compromise.
As principal photography
for Bumblebee wrapped in November of 2017.
Goodbye, Bumblebee.
The baton was passing to ILM
who were working with a smaller budget
on a less robot heavy movie.
There was definitely a difference there
and that difference was that we did tend
to respect the designs, which were less pieces.
It was way less robots that we were designing,
a much more focused experience.
And you would think, "Well, great,
you just saved a bunch of money, right?"
It costs a million dollars
to transform one of these characters.
It will bankrupt us to animate this many robots.
So less robots, less stress, right?
No,
because now everybody's looking
at those pieces very specifically.
If you just got all the pieces
and it's like 19 of them,
then you better know what you're doing with every one of those.
That intricate detail in those soft spaces
is really what makes this design
of Transformer movie robots stand out.
But not every Bumblebee scene made the cut.
Travis was constantly pulling inspiration
from Spielberg's playbook.
A lot of Amblin references.
And while some of those ideas felt fresh,
others were things the audience had seen before.
He puts his energy in the house
and a few of those appliances started getting alive, yeah.
I think there was a washing machine or something,
or a dishwasher.
Like Charlie's forehead, the scene was cut,
because it was deemed to be a direct copy
of "Revenge of the Fallen."
But one of the most dramatic changes
came straight from the top.
Lorenzo is a producer in the movie,
he comes with great pedigree from running a studio.
Lorenzo decided he'd see
what a test audience would make
of an early cut of Bumblebee
and the feedback was...
...not good.
Audiences loved John Cena,
so Lorenzo ordered a whole new scene
to be written and shot for the start of the film.
Basically the re-shoots were because of him,
to tell his story right at the beginning.
And I think they had to humanize him a little bit,
a little bit more.
Oh, I hate you.
That hurts because I love you.
Sort of fitting a character to the actor's strengths
is always a good idea if it works in the story,
and I think it did.
Danny, I know I look stupid, but--
Test audiences were also shocked
about the lack of Transformers in a Transformers movie.
I mean, Bumblebee
was always kind of a different movie in a way
that we were missing a little chunk of action.
It was Lorenzo di Bonaventura that actually came forward,
and said, "This would really help if we can add some action
at the beginning of the movie so that people get like,
this is a Transformers movie."
It was very late in the schedule.
It was impossible.
But it was also Christmas morning,
because we were going to be given the reigns
to create Cybertron.
Even if Prime couldn't save Cybertron,
it was up to ILM to create a Cybertron scene
that might save the movie.
There was no other choice,
we had to say yes and we had to succeed.
There was some budget given
'cause we had to pull people back.
It wasn't extravagant.
Bumblebee would now start
with the scene depicting the Civil War on Cybertron.
But would it be enough to make the film a success
at the Box Office?
We will fight on,
but we must find refuge first.
And usher in a new post Michael Bay world
led by Travis Knight.
You couldn't say no to it and you couldn't fail.
Bumblebee landed in December of 2018,
but would Travis Knight's heartfelt story,
coupled with Lorenzo di Bonaventura's spectacle,
resonate with audiences?
There was a sweetness about the Bumblebee movie.
I think you connect in a way
that you maybe don't with some of the Michael Bay films.
I know the sequence on Cybertron from Bumblebee
is a massive fan favorite.
Contact with the Capitol.
There's too many of them.
What it turned into is every scene
that we wanted to see as kids.
On December 21st, 2018,
Bumblebee rolled into theaters and was a hit,
with worldwide theatrical earnings of $468 million,
and an estimated production budget of less than 135 million.
Bumblebee was a critical
and financial success for Paramount.
The movie did make enough to keep the franchise rolling.
Paramount said, "Okay, cool, you can go,
you can do your own thing."
But the studio wanted them
doing Marvel's thing.
Paramount's bid to build the Transformers universe
to rival Marvel's turned into a soft mid-series reboot,
one that got the franchise back on track.
So in early 2020,
Paramount Studios brought in writers,
Joby Harold and James Vanderbilt to each write a script
with one directive,
to expand the universe to include characters
from the Transformers: Beast Wars series from the 90s.
All right, he's coming back.
The studio expanded the universe
with new factions like the Maximals,
the core of Beast Wars
who landed on prehistoric earth
and transformed into well, beasts.
Cheedor, maximize.
It was the first time we did 3D animation
in a Transformers Hasbro property.
The TV show was crude,
but it was a mountain of new IP that Paramount
intended to mine for its present day universe.
Paramount went with Joby Harold's script
that preserved the Bumblebee tone and timeline,
and introduced a new breed of Transformers.
Who wants some?
Beast Wars was in,
but the stars of Bumblebee were out.
Rise of the Beast takes place seven years
after Bumblebee
so the cast didn't include actors
such as Hailee or John Cena.
Well, at least Paramount had locked in
Travis to direct,
and he was set to roll cameras in early 2020,
until he wasn't.
Knight's vision clashed with the franchises',
so he returned to Laika to focus on animation,
but the studio landed a hot new director
in Steven Caple Jr.
This is the first film that he had any knowledge
- of visual effects in. - Whoops.
Nothing before Transformers franchise that is detrimental.
But he was fresh off of helming "Creed II"
which took home a worldwide gross of $214 million,
with a measly production budget of 50 million,
just like Bumblebee it was a financial and critical hit.
Steven could do drama,
but could he recreate Bay Era action?
Which is exactly what producer di Bonaventura
thought was missing from Bumblebee
so their new director brought in his writers
to blow up the script, in a good way.
They told us they wanted to have a bold vision
with Transformers and open it up, make it a bigger scope,
add a little bit more world building.
A lot more world building.
The producers wanted Rise of the Beasts
to build on Bumblebee
and connect to the Bay Films.
It was an explosive page one rewrite
that would take time to craft.
We looked at it as kind of an origin story
to Transformers growing to love Earth,
and wanting to also bring in a lot of elements
from the 1986 version of Transformers.
Look, it's Unicron.
Specifically a planetary-size transformer
from the G1 cartoon who eats planets.
Unicron, when can we bring Unicron in?
How can we see more of this?
Awaken, almighty Unicron.
Your time has come.
Rise of the Beasts was becoming a beast,
all the world building, world devouring,
and bridging and sequel, prequeling, and homaging,
was a lot to cram into a 120 something page script.
Well, at least with ILM,
they wouldn't have to worry about visual effects.
We couldn't do it.
Paramount wanted to premiere
Rise of the Beasts in June of 2022,
which only gave ILM one year to do the VFX.
ILM was super busy at that point as well,
coming in on off the back of COVID.
They basically turned around and said like,
"We're too busy. The budget's not big enough.
We don't have enough time to do it."
You know, you just couldn't quite make it all work.
ILM wouldn't bite on the condensed schedule,
but luckily over in London...
...the Moving Picture Company was ready to take it on.
Beast Wars, I didn't really look into it too much.
Maybe they weren't ready.
I was aware of it,
but not something that I was a huge fan of.
Transformers had a new director
and a new script that was bursting at the seams
with a new VFX company in London.
Still the producers had a clear direction.
So they wanted a bit of a balance
between what Michael Bay had done for his franchise
and Bumblebee as well.
What are you?
So it was a bit of a mishmash between the both
to try and get that sweet spot.
The producers were convinced
that the sweet spot between explosions
and a heartfelt storyline
would make Rise of the Beasts a hit.
But the timeline for the VFX wasn't sweet at all.
We were actually briefed saying that,
"You have one year to complete it,"
which is a very, very condensed timeline
for a film of that scale.
These are my fellow Maximals.
The Maximals were very interesting
because they were the thing that made this film unique.
Our leader, Optimus Primal.
That name rings a bell.
- Autobots, roll out. - Roll out.
So how did MPC come up
with such an OP design for Optimus Primal?
Basically, we were told, giant gorilla,
and he's almost always in his actual beast mode.
As for the human actors,
Dominique Fishback was cast as
the budding young archaeologist, Elena Wallace.
Are you even pushing?
Yeah, I'm pushing.
And Anthony Ramos would play Noah Diaz.
Don't forget to laugh at all their jokes.
White people love that shit.
But with all of these additions,
there was a major subtraction from Rise of the Beasts.
Well, well, who have we got here?
For this film, they wanted to change it up,
they didn't want Bumblebee in the spotlight,
they wanted Mirage to be in the spotlight.
The name's Mirage.
There you go, now we're friends.
Pete Davidson, wow.
Optimus, hey man, you looking good.
I think it's informative casting of like,
who can we hire to be legit excited
about being in a Transformers movie,
and would bring in a new crowd of people?
Mirage not Bumblebee,
was the new face of the franchise.
I like that, I like it a lot.
I'd seen Pete Davidson on Saturday Night Live,
but I was like, oh, you know, Mirage,
he's a wise cracker,
but his character has some real gravitas,
especially towards the end,
what's that gonna look like?
Autobots, roll out.
Pete Davidson brought this different kind of energy
and enthusiasm to the character.
He didn't treat ET like this.
If they wanted to keep the emotional heart
and weight of the Bumblebee story into Beast Wars
they negated that the second they hired
a comedian to do one liners.
Cross my spark and hope to die.
Wow, that was corny when I said it out loud.
The fifth installment
of the Transformers franchise,
Rise of the Beasts had big and small shoes to fill.
I think that we have an opportunity here
to start a anew and develop our relationship.
So it was a little bit of both,
they wanted what Michael Bay had done
and what Knight had done for Bumblebee as well.
But there was some confusion
as to what it actually was.
We knew this was the continuation of The Transformers
but also somewhat of a reboot as well.
So, sequel? Reboot?
Or that mysterious gray area where studios like to live?
Canon for Bumblebee and also the 2007 series.
It needed to be seven years after Bumblebee
but we had to keep the continuity of the Bay Verse.
It was a little bit of a gray area for us,
which was a bit weird.
What the hell am I looking at?
Rise of the Beasts
needed to thread a rather narrow needle
to tie the Transformers universes together,
and finally launch its cinematic universe.
♪ Cash rules everything around me C.R.E.A.M. get ♪
Principal photography began
on June 7th, 2021 in Los Angeles,
then moved to New York City,
technically it was Montreal doubling as Brooklyn.
And just a few weeks into filming,
Paramount announced that Rise of the Beasts
would premiere the following year on June 24th, 2022.
None of the Transformers films in history
were made in one year,
so I don't know why they thought this one
they would be able to make in one year.
After wrapping in New York, Canada,
the cast and crew flew to Peru in early October of 2021,
on time and on schedule.
Crew morale was high heading into Peru
and it looked like they were gonna make their deadline.
Even with no VFX experience,
the looming one year deadline seemed attainable
for new director, Steven.
He even had master of the Bay Verse,
executive producer Michael Bay in his corner.
But the weather was unpredictable
and shut down filming for days on end.
It keeps raining and stopping and raining and stopping.
And what threatened to sink the production
was the unpredictable storyline.
Every week there was a new script.
Every week there were new scenes that we never--
So we would plan for something and the next week,
everything I planned to the trash,
let's plan for something else.
The production was falling behind
and the changes were coming from di Bonaventura.
I think Lorenzo wanted a bigger scope.
Maximize.
He want a lot of robots, much more robots.
He want a lot of fights,
and much closer to a Michael Bay movie.
It was huge, it was much bigger than,
much bigger than Bumblebee.
The original plan for Rise of the Beasts
was to keep what worked in Bumblebee.
Thank you you for giving me my voice.
And then take the action up a notch
to satisfy the Bay Verse fans.
I have come here to kick ass.
But somewhere along the line,
they just cranked up the spectacle.
It was very complicated.
At the end we did it, but it was not easy,
it was not easy at all.
Miraculously, Rise of the Beasts
completed filming on October 20th, 2021,
on time, but over budget.
The script changes blew up the production,
but they had even greater financial consequences
for the VFX House back in London, MPC.
These things are costly, you know?
You can change one simple thing in the story,
and for you it might just be writing
a couple lines of script, but down the line,
that could be tens of millions of dollars in VFX changes.
MPC had just one year to complete
the visual effects for Rise of the Beasts.
So spending time and money on deleted scenes
put the 2022 Premier in serious jeopardy.
Meanwhile, there were other bigger problems.
The big plane.
Oh God.
Stratosphere, he was by far our biggest character.
Lord of the skies.
He was actually such a big character
that our technology systems couldn't actually handle him.
There was actually a lot of back and forth
between us and the software team
to upgrade our technology systems
to actually pump him through.
Yeah, I'm walking to Peru.
Deleted scenes and costly tech upgrades
were a painful setback for MPC,
but Michelle Yeoh's Metallic Golden Eagle was pure agony.
Airazor was the biggest pain for this entire film.
She had the least developed concept art,
just basically a very rough sketch.
What is this symbol?
It is the Maximal crest, it is all that I have left.
We spent a lot of time redesigning
the concept art that we were given,
and no one was happy with it
because she looked like a big golden pigeon.
But I'll be all right.
I personally spent nearly a year
just on that one character.
But MPC had only one year to do all of the VFX.
As we started building the characters
and we started doing the things that we needed to do,
the studio, Paramount, actually realized
that this is not possible in one year.
In November of 2021,
Paramount announced that Rise of the Beasts
would be delayed a full year to June, 2023.
This caused a ripple effect across
Paramount's release schedule,
and when the film limped into theaters that summer,
COVID still had the world on pause.
Ticket sales were down for all the studios
as moviegoers stayed home and stayed safe.
Director Steven had survived the Peruvian Jungle,
massive script changes and unrealistic deadlines.
Everything that he went through to actually
get this thing made is an incredible success
on that part from the financial standpoint.
But ultimately, Rise of the Beasts
couldn't survive its target audience.
Fans didn't really care about the direction it was going,
and I don't think Michael Bay even cared
about the direction that it was going either.
I didn't hear anything about Michael Bay
or Steven's involvement in this film,
and I think that really shows in the Box Office as well.
The Transformers will return after these messages.
Rise of the Beasts was a Bumblebee sequel
meant to reboot the franchise,
connect the Bay verse to the Bumble verse,
and finally launch its own cinematic universe.
Paramount pinned the future
of the franchise on Rise of the Beasts.
They needed the movie to do a lot of things at once,
and I think that was the cause of the downfall.
So with lofty goals,
Rise of the Beasts premiered on June 9th, 2023,
but grossed just 442 million worldwide.
Close to what Bumblebee grossed
but on a Bay budget of 200 million,
it was the lowest grossing live action film
in franchise history.
And there were reasons,
starting with no Michael at the helm.
He knows how to make a film that is marketable,
a massive blockbuster.
He makes his movies for the movie-going audience.
Wants to entertain,
and he's relentless about that.
Jacques, make it more interesting,
your first frame, it's pretty boring, dude.
He's a master at creating these experiences.
Just wondering what the you're doing standing around.
Let's get to work, okay?
This film, I don't think we can say the same thing.
By Bay Verse standards,
Rise of the Beasts was a financial failure.
The response was "meh."
I mean, nobody hated it, but nobody loved it either.
They didn't really have a super clear vision
for what they wanted.
It was a lot of movie, I think, for two hours.
The movie aimed to unify the series
while resurrecting characters from a 90s franchise.
Who are you?
And an earth eating villain
from the G1 universe.
All these things didn't really make much sense,
didn't really carry much weight.
Like, more, more, more, maybe isn't always better.
Everybody just kept getting, some would say, greedy.
"If we just throw more and more in,
we have more opportunity to do more stuff."
And they rushed it, that's a big mistake.
I never should have taken us so far from home.
The lackluster Box Office,
and lack of fan interest,
plus Paramount's $8 billion merger with Skydance
signaled trouble for the franchise
and the end of Paramount's hopes
for the Transformers cinematic universe.
Still a fan of Transformers,
but the movie universe just doesn't have the story,
connective tissue that I look for in a franchise.
The most successful cinematic universes
are universes where there's a lot of different things
happening in different worlds, different characters,
completely different things, and you can tie them together.
There has to be an overarching theme
across all of the films,
which I think Transformers doesn't have.
You haven't heard the last of Megatron.
So is the dream of a live action
Transformers universe...
That's probably just a dumb old dream.
...really over?
Hang on to your dreams, Chip.
The future is built on dreams.
Hang on.
I think they need a very strong reboot,
nothing to do with any of the films that currently exist,
get a fresh take on the franchise.
You might wanna wait a little while,
see how the industry kind of shifts.
Hasbro has learned it's constant change
that we're living in.
So, you've gotta measure the market,
and know when's the next time you get to reinvent yourself.
Because after all,
transformation is what endeared us to the toys,
the cartoon, and the comics in the first place.
It's about the stuff of life, transformation.
Wait, I still function .
Transforming is what we do.
That is what we wish to do as children.
Every kid recognizes that.
That's the appeal.
And the toys are great.
The secret of its success is basically the toy itself
and the storyline that's been developed around it
that pulls people in and they just wanna know
more and more about these crazy characters.
We grew up on 'em. Our kids are gonna grow up on 'em.
Their kids are gonna grow up on 'em.
And it speaks to the strength of
the initial characters
that were conceived in the cartoon.
It's over, Prime.
I never thought and ever imagined back in the 1980s
when I was working on this
that I would still be talking about it 40 years later.
We didn't know that it would have a life
that would go on decade after decade.
I realize that whatever it was we did, it resonated.
The Transformers rolled out in the 80s,
and four decades later they're still trucking.
A creative achievement shared by everyone
who shaped the Transformers universe along the way.
A lot of people take credit
for creating The Transformers
and the truth is that a lot of people had a part in it.
Whatever we did at the beginning,
whatever we infected that with, it stuck,
'cause everybody seemed to love it and care,
and make it mean something.
And so, good job, everybody.