Since the Transformers toy line was introduced by Hasbro in the mid-1980s, the property has gone on to encompass not only toys but comic books, animated series, video games, and live-action films. Starting with Michael Bay's Transformers in 2005, the live-action movie series from Paramount has established their own mythology largely removed from other mediums in which the Autobots and Decepticons have appeared - though many classic characters made the jump to the big screen.
In the wake of 2014's Transformers: Age of Extinction - which drew unenthused reviews from both critics and fans alike - Paramount restructured their Transformers series, establishing a writer's room for what the studio hopes to be a successful cinematic universe. The next film slated for release within the world populated by Robots in Disguise is Transformers: The Last Knight. Now, a Transformers producer offers an explanation as to how the long-standing property's other mythologies will be included within the new film.
During an interview with Screen Rant while on the set of Transformers: The Last Knight, producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura spoke about combining the history of the comics and the animated TV series into a Transformers guide:
Hasbro put together sort of a bible of all the mythologies that have been put forward, and they put it into one thing, and some of the comic book doesn’t fit exactly with the TV shows and the movies. So there were a few rough edges we had to round off.
Additionally, since The Last Knight will be the fifth installment in Paramount's Transformers series - which has another film and a Bumblebee spinoff planned as well - the movies have formed their own lore. On combining the mythologies, di Bonaventura said:
But now with a fifth movie coming, there's a lot of mythology that we've established as well. So, what we did was really built all three of the things into one very large document – one very large world.
The fact that the writer's room had access to a Transformers bible will likely excite fans of other forms of Transformers media since it offers the possibility that The Last Knight will include more references to the larger history of the property. Certainly, Transformers has a relatively long legacy in pop culture - stretching back farther than the live-action films in the past decade, at least - and fans will have their favorite aspects of the Autobots' mythos.
That said, although the Transformers guide exists, there's no telling how much was used in the adaptation process of The Last Knight, or the other upcoming films within the shared universe. As di Bonaventura indicated, the live-action Transformers franchise still works within its own mythology, and the other content in the property's bible may simply be used as inspiration. Still, the writers having that information of the Transformers' legacy may go a long way in helping upcoming installments in the live-action franchise to honor the larger history of the Robots in Disguise.
