Skydance Taps Michael Bay, Steven Spielberg for New Transformers Movie

While not officially confirmed by Paramount, Deadline is reporting that the studio has reached out to Steven Spielberg and Michael Bay to return to the franchice. Both had contractually obligated executive producer credit on Bumblebee and Rise of the Beasts but were not really involved in a meaningful way on either picture. 

It seems this time the goal is to restore that first few films magic with more input from both with Bay directing once again. Currently the film will be based on a script by Jason Fuchs (Wonder, Woman, Argylle, It: Welcome to Derry). The 8th installment will retain the same producing team of Lorenzo di Bonaventura, Mark Vahradian, Don Murphy, Tom DeSanto and Hasbro. No other details were provided so unknown if this is a reboot or a continuation of the previous films. 

The move is a bit of surprise but the now completed merger of WB and Paramount has changed the needs of the company. The merged company has a value of around $81 billion with a debt load of $80 billion so every single decision for years will be entirely about how to reduce that load. Debt has monthly interest payments even for mega corporations. The result is they need to take big, but safe, swings and the team of Spielberg and Bay has shown with previous films that worst case scenario they will break even at the box office with best case being at least $1 billion at the box office. 

Assuming this rumor is true, still early times as the combined company has ton of projects to cancel, new ones to greenlight, at least 10,000 employees to layoff and who knows what else so its a time of change for Paramount and Hollywood in general. Even if the script was accepted, looking at least two years from now so realistically the earliest the film could hit theaters is possibly Christmas 2028 but probably Summer 2029 is more realistic.