While director Michael Bay might not be known in film circles for his nuance or profound cinematic leaps forward, one thing is undeniable: his films resonate. Transformers grossed $319 million, and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen grossed over $400 million and was second only to Avatar in box office gross for 2009. Film snobs can turn their noses up at the Transformers series if they want, but the fact of the matter is people like them.
Deadline Hollywood peeked behind the scenes at the writing process that drives hundreds of millions of dollars with every release. The Transformers movies don’t have just one writer: they have a writers room that’s staffed like a TV show. Paramount head writer Akiva Goldsman describes their process:
“There is such reciprocity between TV and movies now, that we’re borrowing this from TV,” Goldsman said. “...We’ve got a work space that is beautifully production designed to be immersive with a strong sense of the franchise history,” he said. “We will look at the toys, the TV shows, the merchandise, everything that has been generated by Hasbro, from popular to forgotten iterations, and establish a mythological time line. It has been designed with a lot of visual help, toys, robots, sketches and writers and artists. After that super saturation, the writers will figure out not one, but numerous films that will extend the universe.”
For more about the writing process behind what could be the biggest film of 2017, see the full story at Deadline Hollywood.
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