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The next installment in the Transformers movie franchise is getting prehistoric. During a media event, it was revealed the next film’s title is Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, and yes, they are finally diving into Beast Wars mythos. And there are a lot of familiar faces coming to the movie.
Directed by Steven Caple Jr. (Creed II) and produced by Lorenzo Di Bonaventura (Bumblebee), the movie is set in 1994, seven years after the events of Bumblebee. The movie will partly take place in New York City, largely in Brooklyn. “I don’t think we’ve ever seen the Autobots roll through New York,” Caple Jr. said during a media event.
The film’s main characters hail from that borough, but it won’t stick to just the city that doesn’t sleep. The film will also take place at Machu Picchu in Peru as well. But since these Transformers films have covered the Autobots and Decepticons quite a bit, it was time for some new ingrediants to be added. Cue the Predacons and Maximals.
“We had somewhat exhausted I would say the battle between Decepticons and Autobots, and certainly, we have explored it in a lot of different ways,” explained Di Bonaventura. “How do we find a new set of villains? How do we find a new set of priorities for the villains? And again, saving the world of course is left to the Autobots, and in this case, the Maximals. If you’ve seen and been a fan of the other movies, you’re going to see villains you’ve never seen before and you’re going to see Autobots you’ve never seen before. You’re going to see a lot of elements that we’ve never done before, and it’s one of the driving decisions that we are making along the way. Have we done that before? Whether that’s an action scene or whether that’s a character, and fortunately for us, Transformers has a lot of tribes. And there’s a really large base of characters and there’s also a large base of fans that relate to different tribes. And so, this movie is bringing a lot of those tribes together.”
The main robot hero for this movie will be Optimus Prime–which will be voiced by Peter Cullen once again–and you’ll see more returning favorites like Bumblebee, except this time he transforms into a Camaro Z28. From the classic cartoon, Mirage pops up, except it won’t be a Formula 1 racecar. Mirage will be transforming into a Porsche 911. Arcee returns from the Bumblebee movie as well, and she’ll be transforming into a Ducati.
As for the Maximals, the robotic bird Airrazor, the rhinoceros Rhinox, and the leader of the Maximals Optimus Primal–who turns into an ape–will be introduced in the film. The villain of the movie will be the Terrorcon Scourge, who transformed into a locust in the Beast Wars comic–although he never made it onto the cartoon–and a boat in G1. Scourge’s right hand Nightbird will also appear in the movie, with the ability to transform into a Nissan GT-R. During the event, none of the Predacons were named for the film.
The film will also feature Anthony Ramos (In the Heights) as Brooklyn native Noah with a keen eye for fixing electronics and Dominique Fishback (Judas and the Black Messiah) as Elena, an artifact researcher.
Tranformers: Rise of the Beasts is expected to release on June 24, 2022.
