New ‘Transformers’ Movie Officially Coming in 2022

The next installment of the live-action Transformers franchise got an official release date on Friday, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The outlet learned that the next Transformers movie will be in theaters on June 24, 2022. So far, there is no title for the sci-fi-action movie. The Transformers release date is welcome news for fans, though it does not come with many details.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, there are multiple Transformers projects in the works right now, including two big budget movies and one animated film, all with different creators behind them. There is no telling which group’s movie is coming up next, nor what it will be about or when it will be set in the fictional universe’s time line. Paramount has hired screenwriter Joby Harold for one Transformers movie and James Vanderbilt for another, with Josh Cooley writing the animated movie.

Back in January, Deadline reported that Vanderbilt’s script was intended to be a adaptation of Beast Wars: Transformers — a computer-animated incarnation of the franchise that aired in the late 1990s. That show established itself in the far-distant future of the original transformers franchise, so Vanderbilt’s movie may be separate from the existing canon altogether.

Meanwhile, Harold’s movie will reportedly be a direct sequel to 2018’s Bumblebee, the franchise’s most critically successful film yet. Presumably, both of these movies will maintain the existing canon established in the last six installments. The Transformers cinematic franchise began in 2007, with director Michael Bay overseeing the first five movies. Only in 2018 did Bay step back from director to producer for Bumblebee, a prequel directed by Travis Knight.

Bumblee received generally positive reviews — far better than those of its predecessors — yet it still maintained the same time line and events set out in Bay’s movies. This was a point of contention for many fans, who did not like how far Bay’s movies had strayed from the version of Transformers they knew from cartoons and comic books.

The news that Paramount is branching out into other Transformers incarnations such as Beast Wars is encouraging to many fans, who want to see the series’ full potential realized. While Bay’s movies have a big focus on interactions between the Transformers and the military, many earlier incarnations were more light-hearted, with children serving as the human protagonists and the Autobots living in secret. Other stories centered around epic galactic wars, with no human intervention.

The next installment in the Transformersfranchise is slated to hit theaters on June 24, 2022. Keep it locked to PopCulture.com for more movie news, and everything in entertainment. Follow PopCulture on Twitter too, for the very latest in TV, music and more!