Another member has joined the ranks of the “Transformers Writers Room,” assembled by Paramount Pictures to farm the series for future franchise features, and Deadline reports it’s none other than Steven DeKnight! Recently the showrunner for the first season of “Marvel’s Daredevil,” DeKnight previously created the “Spartacus” series on Starz and worked as producer on “Smallville,” “Dollhouse,” and “Angel.”
DeKnight joins a braintrust that is lead by Academy Award winner Akiva Goldsman (I Am Legend, A Beautiful Mind) and includes “The Walking Dead” and “Invincible” creator Robert Kirkman, the Iron Man writing pair of Art Marcum and Matt Holloway, “Fringe” and “Lost” scribe Jeff Pinkner, X-Men: The Last Stand and The Incredible Hulk‘s Zak Penn, Andrew Barrer & Gabriel Ferrari, who did production re-writes on Marvel’s upcoming Ant-Man, Black Hawk Down scribe Ken Nolan, “Black List” scribes Geneva Robertson-Dworetrepeat, Christina Hodson, and Lindsey Beer, a science major at Stanford, who has written original specs in the sci-fi and fantasy genre.
“The whole process of the story room was really delightful,” Goldsman recently said, “and we are seeing it more in movies as this moves toward serialized storytelling. There are good rooms around town, including the Monsters Room at Universal, the Star Wars room, and of course, at Marvel. We’re trying to beg, borrow and steal from the best of them, and gathered a group of folks interested in developing and broadening this franchise.”
Some films previously mentioned as being possibilities from the writers room are a solo Bumblebee movie, a Cybertron origin film, as well as a revival of the fan-favorite animated series “Beast Wars.”
Last year, Paramount released the franchise’s fourth film, Transformers: Age of Extinction, starring Mark Wahlberg, Nicola Peltz and Jack Reynor. When asked if he’d be back for a sequel, Wahlberg previously stated that he’s contracted for “a couple more.” It is also believed that Bay himself will return to helm Transformers 5 after he completes work on his Benghazi drama 13 Hours. Recent reports have also connected Bay to the science fiction novel adaptation Time Salvager. It remains to be seen how many directing projects Bay can fit into his busy schedule.
Age of Extinction grossed over $1 billion at the global box office with all four films combined grossing over $3.7 billion.
