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Paramount won’t be rolling out a Transformers One sequel. The film’s director Josh Cooley says he had plans for future installments of the animated prequel movie that transformed Energon miners Orion Pax (voiced by Chris Hemsworth) and D-16 (Brian Tyree Henry) into Optimus Prime and Megatron — rival leaders of the warring Autobots and Decepticons — after teaming up to save Cybertron from the traitorous Sentinel Prime (Jon Hamm) and the Quintessons. Despite strong reception from fans and critics alike, the Paramount and Hasbro animated movie underperformed at the box office, grossing $129 million against a reported budget of $75 million.
“I wish I had something to announce, but I do not. What I’ve been told is that Paramount Animation is not interested in making a sequel,” Cooley said of a potential Transformers Two during a panel at the Transformers convention BotCon over the weekend. The news was met with boos and groans from attendees.
“That’s what I was told. I wish we could,” Cooley continued. “I have ideas, too. So it would have been cool.” He added, “We’ll see what happens. You never know.”
Transformers One opened with $24.6 million at the domestic box office when it rolled out into theaters last September, placing second behind Warner Bros. threepeat Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. The first fully-animated Transformers movie since 1986 ultimately finished its nine-week run at the box office with $59.1 million domestic and $69.2 million international for a global total of $129 million.
The film ended with the newly-christened Optimus Prime leading the Autobots, including Commander Elita-1 (Scarlett Johansson) and B-127/Bumblebee (Keegan-Michael Key), and betrayed bot Megatron taking the Decepticon name alongside Shockwave (Jason Konopisos-Alvarez), Soundwave (Jon Bailey), and Starscream (Steve Buscemi).
Cooley told ComicBook at the time that the conflict between the heroic Autobots and the evil Decepticons would unfold differently than the live-action films, which have been set on Earth since the Michael Bay-directed Transformers in 2007. (Paramount announced a live-action G.I. Joe/Transformers crossover movie in 2024.)
“The thing I’m excited about moving forward is we can tell the same story and do things slightly differently, the way we started slightly differently,” Cooley said. “There’s so many different continuities, it’s just a huge sandbox. And so I think it’s a prequel to the same type of events, but maybe in the future they’re different.”
Instead of a Transformers One sequel, the Oscar-winning Toy Story 4 filmmaker is set to return to Paramount Animation for an animated adaptation of I Eat Poop: A Dung Beetle Storybased on the children’s book by Mark Pett. Ryan Reynolds’ Maximum Effort is also producing with Disney’s Aladdin and Snow White songwriters Benj Pasek & Justin Paul.
