Hasbro have been desperate for years to turn their most lucrative toy lines into blockbuster movie franchises, and the results have been less than stellar so far. Michael Bay’s Transformers series may have raked in close to $4.5 billion at the box office, but the quality seemed to get progressively worse with each subsequent sequel, not to mention takings dropping by $500 million between Age of Extinction and The Last Knight.
Competing scripts were commissioned earlier this year for a new entry, one a straightforward reboot written by Joby Harold and the other a Beast Wars adaptation to be scripted by James Vanderbilt. It’s the former that seems to be moving quicker, though, with Creed II‘s Steven Caple Jr. hired to direct earlier this week.
Not only that, but insider Mikey Sutton is now claiming that this is the start of the Hasbro Cinematic Universe taking shape, with How to Train Your Dragon‘s Dean DeBlois still set to write and helm Micronauts, while the toy company are also in possession of the Power Rangers and have tasked I Am Not Okay With This creator Jonathan Entwistle to oversee the entire slate of film and television production for the franchise.
Furthermore, he explains how it’s all going to fit together in the end, saying:
This is world building, one that will include G.I. Joe, ROM, Visionaries, and M.A.S.K. I am hearing that the new Transformers will mention or have an appearance by M.A.S.K.; I’ve been whispered that John Cena’s character Jack Burns in Bumblebee could secretly have ties to M.A.S.K. That leaves M.A.S.K. to form the bridge between Transformers and G.I. Joe.
Having already failed miserably with both Battleship and the two painfully mediocre G.I. Joe movies, Hasbro will be hoping that they finally manage to get their shared universe up and running this time around, and there might even be room for Henry Golding’s Snake Eyes if his spinoff does well. In any case, having the Power Rangers cross over with the Transformers and including M.A.S.K. is certainly an interesting angle, and it’s one that could win the all-important nostalgia market as audiences relive their childhoods spent bashing the respective action figures against each other on the big screen.