When the next Transformers movie hits theaters this summer, it won't just be the next film in the successful franchise, it will also be a movie trying to work toward building its own cinematic universe. The producer behind the franchise has said that Transformers: The Last Knight will include some aspects designed to set up the next film, which will not be a proper sequel, but rather a spinoff movie starring the popular character Bumblebee.
So there's probably, in a really meaningful way, two or three things in this movie that really have a meaningful aspect in terms of it, and then there's a bunch of little things. But we're not making this movie to set up the other movies. That's what I'm trying to say. If you get too carried away with that, you stop thinking about this movie.
While there will be a few items designed to lay the groundwork for the planned spinoff producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura tells Collider that those moments won't necessarily be obvious. The producer certainly dances around his answer, and he doesn't want to be too specific about what we'll see that will lead into the next film. What does seem clear is that while there will be items in the script that are there for that specific purpose, Transformers: The Last Knight is not being specifically designed to build toward the Bumblebee movie. They clearly want Knight to be its own thing. The film probably won't end with Bumblebee going off on his own to follow a new mission. More than likely we'll see the Bumblebee movie open with references to things that we saw in The Last Knight becoming more important.
One thing that Lorenzo di Bonaventura does say, however, is that Transformers: The Last Knight will open up a much broader mythology for the Transformers movies to explore. It would appear that the reason for this is that it gives the franchise several potential new places to go, not simply with the Bumblebee film, but also other potential sequels and spinoffs. We know from the news coming out of the location shoots that the new movie will deal with everything from King Arthur to World War II. The trailer also showed us an Optimus Prime that has apparently gone bad, and didn't show us much of the time jumping aspects we were ready for. It certainly opens up possibilities as at this point we can't even be sure that Prime will be leading the team in future films.
It's a nearly foregone conclusion that Transformers: The Last Knight will be a major box office winner in 2017, the last couple films have cleared the billion-dollar mark globally. It will be interesting to see how the, by comparison, smaller Bumblebee movie does.
