Development continues on the Hasbro Cinematic Universe at Paramount Pictures and the studio has officially announced the franchise’s writers room has taken shape with a number of notable writers.
Akiva Goldsman, who previously headed up the Transformers franchise writers room, will oversee the room which includes: Michael Chabon, Pulitzer Prize winner for The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay and screenwriter for Spider-Man 2 and John Carter; Brian K. Vaughan, Eisner award winning writer of comics Y: The Last Man and Saga; Nicole Perlman, co-writer of Guardians of the Galaxy and Captain Marvel; Cheo Coker, showrunner of Marvel’s Luke Cage; John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein, directors of Vacation and writers of Spider-Man: Homecoming; Joe Robert Cole, Black Panther and American Crime Story: The People vs. OJ Simpson writer; Jeff Pinker, writer of The Amazing Spider-Man 2 and The Dark Tower; Lindsey Beer, a member of the Transformers writing room and screenwriter of Kingkiller Chronicle; Nicole Riegel, writer of Blacklist script Dogfight; and Geneva Robertson, one of the writers of the Tomb Raider reboot. Hasbro will also deploy in the room an unprecedented team of its top artists and designers to assist Goldsman and the writers to visualize this all-new cinematic universe.
“Paramount and Hasbro have partnered on many successful films in the past, including the ‘Transformers’ and ‘G.I. Joe,’ franchises,” said Brad Grey, Chairman and CEO of Paramount Pictures. “Bringing together a writers room of this caliber is a bold step for our partnership, and one that we believe is critical for building these brands into new, successful franchises for the future.”
“Together with Paramount, we have assembled a team of incredibly talented creative minds and storytellers to continue to help tell the rich history and narrative behind this interconnected cinematic universe, and we are thrilled to be working with Akiva Goldsman again to guide this process,” said Brian Goldner. “We are also excited to partner with Paramount to produce the films, as we’ve had a strong and collaborative partnership since our first Transformers movie in 2007.”
The franchises set to be the groundwork for the Hasbro Cinematic Universe are G.I. Joe, Micronauts, Visionaries, M.A.S.K. and ROM: SpaceKnight. Paramount and Allspark Pictures (Hasbro’s film label) will produce all of the films with the writer’s room set to convene for the first time on Monday.
While audiences are already familiar with “G.I. Joe” after the two moderately successful films, G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra in 2009 followed by G.I. Joe: Retaliation in 2013, you might need a refresher on the others if you were born after 1990. “ROM” started as a robotic toy kit from Parker Brothers (now a Hasbro subsidiary) and achieved a cult popularity thanks to a Marvel comic book series about a human who volunteers to transform himself into a robotic spaceknight to defend the planet Galador from invading Dire Wraiths. “M.A.S.K.” (Mobile Armored Strike Kommand) was a Kenner product that spawned a one-season Saturday morning cartoon series about a special advanced task force that fights a criminal organization called V.E.N.O.M. (Vicious Evil Network of Mayhem). Another one-and-done animated series was based around “Visionaries: Knights of the Magical Light,” which also became an unsuccessful line of Hasbro action figures that had holograms on their chests and staffs to represent their supernatural magic abilities. The “Micronauts” toys were originally launched in Japan as “Microman” but were re-imagined for America by Mego toys and in a Marvel Comics series as subatomic-sized warriors.
There is no word on whether the long-term plan is to integrate this universe with the Transformers universe, of which three more films are already planned, or if there is potential to reboot failed cinematic Hasbro properties like Battleship or Jem and the Holograms, though if these initial characters translate well, the sky’s the limit.
