Transformers Movie Series To Be Completely Rebooted--Report

Although the Transformers franchise has proven to be a hugely poplar one, 2017's The Last Knight was the least successful film by some distance, suggesting that audience interest in the series might be fading. The spin-off Bumblebee is due out later this year, but a new report states that beyond that, Paramount is planning to reboot the whole series.

As reported by Transformer World, toy manufacturers Hasbro confirmed at the company's Toy Fair 2018 Investor Preview that the series will be entirely reset. In addition, a new agreement with Paramount means that Hasbro will have greater control over the property, including greenlighting movie projects. The site also reports that no Transformers movies beyond Bumblebee remain on Paramount's release schedule.

This is something of a change in fortune for the series. In October 2015, Hasbro announced that there would be at last four more movies, and that a "writers room" had been established to map out the next decade of Transformers across movies, TV, and digital. Following this, Paramount confirmed that Transformers 6 would arrive in 2019, which seems to be no longer the case.

The Last Knight made $605 million worldwide. This was well below the $1.104 billion haul for its predecessor, 2014's The Age of Extinction, and less than the first movie made back in 2007.

Bumblebee hits theaters on December 21, 2018, and stars Hailee Steinfeld and John Cena. It will be directed by Kubo And The Two Strings director Travis Knight, who is making his live-action debut. No footage from the movie has been revealed yet, but a first official image was released in December.