Next Transformers May Be Ready in 2017

Love Michael Bay or hate him, The Transformers still have a major following, and the movies will keep coming for a while. Like Star Wars and the Marvel flicks, the Transformers will have an expanded universe, and the next Transformers sequel now has an estimated time of arrival of some time in 2017.

This will be the fifth Transformers film, in case you’ve lost count, and Collider tells us you can expect it possibly by 2017. It’s unclear whether Michael Bay is still attached, he’s making a movie about Benghazi, 13 Hours, and perhaps they’ll move on with another helmer.

As Hasbro said in a statement, there are plans for an expanded universe, and a group of writers are working to “create a strategic plan around Transformers. We think there are any number of stories to be told from the brand that has been around for thirty years with amazing canon and mythology.” Hasbro added, “We would expect the sequel to the Transformers movie [TF4] to happen in 2017.”

Akiva Goldsman (Batman and Robin, A Beautiful Mind) is currently in charge of the team of writers who will be expanding the Transformers universe, and yes, he’s written crap like Batman and Robin and Deep Blue Sea, but as long as gigantic robots are pounding each other into scrap metal, who cares about the scripts, right? (Bad screenwriting certainly didn’t stop any of the previous Transformers films from raking in over a billion world-wide before.)