Transformers 4 Rumours and News Thread.

[inflatable dalek]

As Digital Spy has what seems to be the first (possibly entirely fictitious) report up on plans for the next movie/s I thought a thread to collect all these things together as they come along over the next few years would be a good idea:

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/movies/n...rmers-4-5.html

So, they're at least looking into getting Bay back directing, hardly surprising considering the gonzo boxoffice, and may film the next two back to back. Frankly if the Statham thing is even remotely true I can't see him playing the main lead (which I can see being a more direct Sam substitute), maybe a Lennox style character.
 

[Paul053]

Just no Daniel, please.
 

[Cliffjumper]

Apparently they're doing an animated G1 remake, no flames on Prime, Welker as gun Megatron, Ironhide as a twat and so on. They've sat down and looked at the box-office, merchandise sales and so on of the first three and realised that the 200 lunatics violently complaining the whole time were right all along.
 

[Sades]

I WANT BW
 

[Blackjack]

Tut-tut, spoiler tags people. We don't want to spoil it for those who don't want to be spoiled.
 

[praetorian]

This part debunked.

This part too.
 

[HHouser]

Honestly I think they should stop while they're ahead. Yes we would love to see more but the rest of the world is declaring "no more". Even with the 1 billion gross sells, how much of that was people seeing it more than once. Just look around, anyone can see that people are getting burned out. I saw the movie on opening day and there were still plenty of empty seats and this wasn't no small theater either. It was downtown in a big city. The "shock and awe" is no longer there and to most people it's just another sequel.
 

[inflatable dalek]

To be honest, I don't think there's enough dedicated Transformers fans who will go see each film multiple times to account for a billion dollars. And even if that is somehow mostly down to repeat business, I don't think Paramount will mind if it keeps bringing the money in, even if it's just entirely down to Cliffy going to see the film 10,000,000,000,000 times looking for that elusive Jolt cameo. I think it'll take a movie just doing "OK" at best for them to considering resting the franchise for now.
 

[Blackjack]

As of today Dark of the Moon ranks fourth in international box office, beating out franchises like Lord of the Rings, Pirates of the Caribbean and all but the last of the Harry Potter movies.

It's only behind Avatar, Titanic and HP8 in terms of the income to the creators.

Unless that's all Cliffy's repeat viewings, I doubt the audience has burnt out yet. Autobot victory Autobot victory!
 

[Cliffjumper]

I only saw it at the cinema once.

But yeh, DotM took a truly stupid amount of money, inflation adjusted or not. TBH, I think Plan A for Paramount is going to be make a film as much like the first three as possible. The 'repeat viewings' thing is irrelevant - let's say it accounts for 25% of tickets or something just for the sake of it, what's to say that 25% won't be seeing the fourth one twice?

Even the reviews were kinder for DotM - the critics had ran out of bitter insults to hurl at Bay, if nothing else.

I think TF is more immune to franchise burn-out than a lot of stuff as well, because in terms of mainstream stuff that's actually likely to be made into films, it's out by itself. Superhero movies overlap on a lot of ground, but there's only going to be one giant transforming robot movie every 2-3 years. 95% of people who watch the things get their ticket, watch their film and have very little to do with Transformers until the next one comes along.
 

[praetorian]

What about a set of prequels? Perhaps a tie-in with the upcoming "'Fall of Cybertron" game? Prime in his prime. Megatron before he became a bum sleeping against a Chicago building.

However, if we assume that Cybertron has no atmosphere, there can't be explosions of fire. Plenty of wreckage, though.
 

[Cliffjumper]

A set of prequels for a trio of mondo successful science fantasy action films? What could possibly go wrong?

Why tie into a computer game a fair percentage of the audience won't ever play? Why set a film on ancient Cybertron when much of the films' success has been down to them being set on present-day Earth?

Transformers + Earth = more than 8000 people interested, especially if you throw 'present day' and 'turn into realistic vehicles audiences can actually relate to' into the mix.
 

[inflatable dalek]

Plus without Earth/any humans it would effectively be a cartoon film rather than a live action one, and if they were going to go down that road they might as well do a Prime tie in straight to DVD feature.
 

[Blackjack]

I don't believe in movies tying in for anything, to be honest. Movies are watched by a large percentage of people out there, whereas stuff like games and comics are only played by the fanbase.

I mean, I don't think more than 10% of the people who watched the live action movies actually read IDW comics or the tie-in games.

Really I think any movies without humans would effectively kill off half of the general mainstream movie-watchers.
 

[inflatable dalek]

Originally Posted by Blackjack

I don't believe in movies tying in for anything, to be honest. Movies are watched by a large percentage of people out there, whereas stuff like games and comics are only played by the fanbase.

Indeed, and for all that comic and book tie in publishers (for most films that have them, not just Transformers) like to promote their works as essential reading to get full enjoyment from the cinema experience I don't think that has ever really been the case, the film sets the agenda and does its own thing and any and all spin offs have to keep pace with it, not the other way round.

The Star Trek Countdown comic is a good example, heavily pushed as the "Official Prequel" it's a enjoyable enough, if throwaway, read but not only does it not tell you anything you need to know that isn't covered by the film itself in about two lines there's various ideas in it that are clearly the result of working from an earlier script which don't gel with the final film, such as Spock and Nero knowing each other before the disaster and there being a lengthy gap between the destruction of Romulus and Nero going back after Spock (a YMMV one is the idea Nero's ship is retrofitted with Borg technology, I think in the film itself it's not supposed to be anything more than the product of a century later, I can't take Kirk's Enterprise as withstanding Borg weapons even for a second, that's the sort of Voyager crap this movie needed to leave well behind).

And that's with the writers of the film working directly on the comic as well, it's hardly surprising the IDW Bayverse tie ins, which never seem to have been given very much access to Paramount's plans despite grand claims in the early days, pretty much don't have any bearing whatsoever on what you need to know before seeing the film.
 

[Cliffjumper]

The IDW Movie comics are hilarious - one of the prequels for DotM saw them butcher the supporting cast when they twigged that Knock Out and DUNE RUNNER weren't going to be in the film, and Paramount totally trolled them with Shockwave to boot (and DW rip-off Shockwave as the icing on the cake). While John Barber seems to have a better handle on it than his forbears, the comics still screw anyone who has been loyally reading them over the second there's a sniff of some cinema trickle-down cash for IDW. It's pretty disrespectful to the 7000 people who buy the comic that they get ****ed every two years in the hope that another 200-300 people walk out of the cinema going "Wow, I loved that film, I wonder if there's a badly drawn comic that completely misses the tone of it out?".
 

[LKW]

For me a prequel makes more sense as its hard to see a sequel when they've KILLED EVERY SINGLE DAMN DECEPTICON (right?).

(For the record, I did like DOTM - bay even seems to have escaped his blue-and-orage obsession - but it really felt like an end of a franchise to me.)
 

[Cliffjumper]

They killed every named Decepticon on Earth. Actually, DotM arguably had the highest Decepticon survival rate - we never see anything done about all the little groups who launch pillars around the world. The five named ones all die, but Megatron and Starscream especially would be a bit played-out in any TF4 - especially as the Fallen and Sentinel have proved that the films can do beaucoup box office without the main villain being named after a bad guy from a 1980s cartoon.

Off the top of my head, I can't think of a single decent prequel in pretty much any medium (excluding the odd flashback from a 'present day' title or show); maybe the book of the Hobbit and CS Lewis' Magician's Nephew, but not a huge amount else. There are probably a couple I've forgotten, but TBH the amount of crap prequels there've been outweigh them. I'm also struggling to think of any that have done box office that wasn't, at best, mildly underwhelming.

Like I've said here and elsewhere, a massive, massive amount of non-fan interest (i.e. close enough to all the ticket sales as a percentage to effectively be everyone; if fandom was to get together enough to boycott one of these things it would make next to zero difference to the box office) is down to the present day setting and the human characters. People like the way (close to) everyday road cars appear and turn into robots. Also, non-fans like the humans - talk to someone about the films and they're as likely to go on about Shia LeBeouf or Josh Duhamel as they are about Ratchet or Soundwave. Sure, they like the robots and the effects, but it's not the whole deal for them.

TBH, in a lot of ways I agree - it's pretty boring for a metal shape on a metal background to turn into a robot; there's nothing being done there that hasn't been done in cartoon or CGI form years ago. The most awesome bits of the films for me have been when the TFs interact with 'real' objects - the show-off Ironhide transformation at the start of RotF, Prime thumping Megatron with a tree, Bumblebee and Barricade leathering each other into bits of a power station, Shockwave striding around Chicago. That's what films can do for Transformers - why junk that in favour of something TF:Prime could do?

Transformers on Cybertron, especially olden days stuff, has only ever been popular with fans. Origin stuff in general is the same, which is why most of the superhero films get it out of the way with relative alacrity and get on with having a main villain for most of the running time.

No, I think the only realistic options are either sequel or reboot, and I think it's too soon for the latter - added onto which I don't really see the need (having a new Megatron, Prime and Bumblebee who would, I expect, look and act much the same as the Bay versions would be pointless and confusing). All they need is for another bunch of Decepticons to descend on Earth for some reason, and as long as there are Autobots there that won't be hard to come up with. The name recognition value of the Decepticons is basically irrelevant; really the only thing having Shockwave for DotM acheived was to allow Bay to punk newstards in a hilarious fashion (not much sneering about the disinformation campaign this time, is there?).

The main questions will be a) how successfully any new director apes Bay and b) how much the humans click with general audiences. For b) it's worth considering they picked Fox and LeBeouf up at just the right time, too.
 

[inflatable dalek]

Originally Posted by Cliffjumper

Off the top of my head, I can't think of a single decent prequel in pretty much any medium (excluding the odd flashback from a 'present day' title or show); maybe the book of the Hobbit and CS Lewis' Magician's Nephew, but not a huge amount else. There are probably a couple I've forgotten, but TBH the amount of crap prequels there've been outweigh them. I'm also struggling to think of any that have done box office that wasn't, at best, mildly underwhelming.

The last Star Trek film? Which managed some sort of super bonus by being both a prequel and a reboot all in one package.

But yeah, the only way there's even a chance of a reboot is if there's a lengthy gap of more than, say, four years before the next one for some reason.
 

[Cliffjumper]

Point taken with Trek (though I'd say its' prequel bits took a back seat to its' reboot bits as far as casual audiences went). It's probably the exception that proves the rule, though, and benefits from being a prequel that largely does the same sort of thing Trek's always done.

I can see the Hobbit doing alright too, but again because it'll cover the same sort of ground as LotR (tenner says a lot of the lighter stuff from the first half of the book disappears and fifty percent of the run time is devoted to the Battle of the Five Armies).

However, I don't think either would prove much of a guideline for a TF prequel; TBH the main reason the Hobbit's being made is because no-one's ever finished reading the Silmarillion and there'd be a war if they simply came up with their own Lord of the Rings 4.