‘Transformers’ and ‘G.I. Joe’ Crossover Movie Gets a Massive Update From the Producer: “we’re going to have to figure out how to create that room”

Since the ending of ‘Transformers: Rise of the Beasts’ we knew that two of Hasbro’s biggest franchises exist in the same universe and that we might be going toward a crossover movie.

And this crossover has been a long time in the making. Since at least 2013 Lorenzo di Bonaventura expressed interest in a ‘G.I. Joe’ and ‘Transformers’ crossover film, with director Jon M. Chu also showing interest by July of the same year. Although the project seemed uncertain in June 2014 and was initially planned to be introduced at the end of ‘G.I. Joe 3,’ Paramount decided against it.

By July 2021, di Bonaventura insisted that the crossover was “inevitable,” despite Paramount’s reluctance. The crossover began to gain traction with ‘Rise of the Beasts’ in June 2023, establishing shared continuity between the franchises. It was officially announced at CinemaCon 2024, with Derek Connolly hired to write the script in June 2024.

Recently, Collider had the opportunity to sit down with di Bonaventura and ask him about the precise plans for the franchise. The good news is that the next live-action movie will be the aforementioned crossover, the somewhat worse news is that a lot of things will depend on the success of ‘Transformers One’

Well, we’re going, again, subject to success, we’re going to do a sequel to this, and there will be an animated version, and it will exist completely separately to whatever we do live-action. The next live-action movie will be a crossover.

Where it will be particularly affected is the fact that we now know what these robots are capable of emotionally in a way. So we’re going to have to figure out how to create that room, that we can afford that, and create a story that you can take more advantage of that.

So one of the things that I’m particularly interested in doing, and we’re still in the development phase, so nothing is by any means written in stone, but I think we need to do more now from the robot point of view in the live-action because that’s the only way you’re really going to get inside them.

As you can see the movie is currently in development but as di Bonaventura stresses it’s going to be a matter of balancing when it comes to the two franchises. You need to figure out the right amount of Joes and bots in order for everything to work as one narrative unit that makes sense:

Instead of them reacting to humans or reacting to the human plot, what is their drive, has to be part of that story now. So it’s going to be complicated because now the hardest thing about a lot of franchise movies is how many characters there are, and the more characters you try to manage, the harder it is to make a bunch of really good ones.

You kind of got to keep going, keep it smaller, keep it smaller. So we’ll be in that process for a while where we’ll start with a bunch of Joes and a bunch of Transformers and I’ll say, regular humans, and then you’re going to do this. That’s kind of where we are right now, is trying to put the larger thing in place.

The trick in this one, like we were talking about here, in trying to find that tone and balance is like, ‘Well, how much of the Joes do you want? And how much of the Transformers do you want?

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