I think a lot of people have assumed over the last couple of months is that Paramount’s Bumblebee movie gives the studio wiggle-room to give the franchise a reboot and it looks like Hasbro has confirmed this during a recent toy fair presentation.
Transformers fan website TFW2005 posted a rundown of the Hasbro Production Presentation at the New York Toy Fair 2019, in that presentation Hasbro themselves called the recent film Bumblebee “a new storytelling universe”. An obvious nod to the previous rumblings that Bumblebee was the start of reboot moving forward.
Bumblebee might not have set the world on fire with its box office numbers but $458 million worldwide is still in the profit zone according to the head of Viacom not too long ago. There is already a sequel to Bumblebee in the works at Paramount along with an Optimus Prime movie and possibly a Cybertron movie as well.
Hasbro will also control the Power Rangers as well, as they’ve suggested in a recent earnings call they’re planning on making a new movie. A G.I. Joe movie titled Snake Eyes is said to be going into production this spring/summer and very well could be the backdoor to a reboot/soft-reboot for that franchise as well.
The Transformers franchise seems to be in a healthy place right now as Bumblebee wasn’t viewed as a joke or a desperate cash-grab and maybe moving away from the Michael Bay stuff is going to be a smart move in the end for Paramount.
SOURCE: HASBRO
