The Transformers franchise has had a lot of success on the big screen from the massively successful box office of the Michael Bay films to the current critical darling that is Transformers One. However, G.I. Joe, another Hasbro property, hasn’t fared nearly as well. The most recent live-action Transformers movie teased a crossover between the two sets of characters, and according to the producer, that movie is still planned down the road, though it sounds like it’s going to be a while before we see it.
The ending of Transformers: Rose of the Beasts revealed that the organization known as G.I. Joe exists in the same world as the live-action Transformers. Speaking with Collider, producer Lorenzro di Bonaventura, confirmed that a crossover is planned to be the next live-action film, whether or not Transformers One gets a sequel, though the movie is still very early in development. However, the producer indicates the next movie may have a significant shift in perspective. He said…
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.
The live-action Transformers films have always been stories told from the perspective of humans who find themselves allied with the massive robots in disguise. This makes Transformers One not only a departure in that the movie is animated, but that the film is entirely about the robots themselves. It sounds like when the Transformers meet G.I. Joe, we’ll begin to get more of the story from the robots themselves.
Of course, this new movie will still have plenty of human characters in the form of whatever members of G.I. Joe are chosen to appear. Although, as Di Bonaventura points out, that presents its own issues, as the Transformers/G.I. Joe crossover will have to juggle a lot of characters in total. He continued…
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?
It sounds like finding that balance between G.I. Joe and the Transformers is the thing that the project is currently working on. Assuming they find it, it’s nice to know the crossover idea isn’t going to be dragged out over multiple movies, but will instead just be the next entry in the series.
