Spielberg Moves Into the Driver’s Seat on the Eighth Transformers Film, With Michael Bay Back in the Frame

Paramount has put Steven Spielberg in charge of the creative side of the next live-action Transformers, with Michael Bay in talks to direct and Shia LaBeouf not returning.

Steven Spielberg is returning to Transformers as more than a name on the credits. Paramount has appointed him to focus on all creative aspects of the next live-action film in the series, alongside longtime producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura, and Michael Bay is in early talks to direct. Deadline broke the story on Tuesday, October 6, describing the project as the eighth live-action installment of the Hasbro franchise and a return to the hands-on creative role Spielberg held on the first two movies. Deadline framed it as Paramount and Hasbro getting closer to bringing the robots back to the big screen.

That earlier role was substantial. Spielberg signed on as an executive producer in 2004, and DreamWorks Pictures was a production company on the first two films. He asked Bay to direct on July 30, 2005. Bay’s first instinct was to wave the idea off as a toy movie, but he wanted to work with Spielberg and gained new respect for the myth after visiting Hasbro. Spielberg read each draft of the screenplay and gave notes, including the suggestion that the story should center on “a boy and his car,” the premise that became Sam Witwicky’s. After Revenge of the Fallen in 2009, Bay and di Bonaventura remained the primary architects of the series while Spielberg stayed on as a less hands-on executive producer. The new arrangement reverses that, with the stated aim, in Deadline’s reporting, to “honor the spirit of the early Transformers films.”

Signal. What happened: Paramount has appointed Steven Spielberg to focus on all creative aspects of the next live-action Transformers film, alongside producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura, with Michael Bay in early talks to direct. Exact object: the eighth live-action Transformers feature, written by Jason Fuchs and set in the present day, with no title, cast, or release date announced. When and where: reported Tuesday, October 6, 2026, as a Paramount Pictures and Hasbro project in development. Why it matters: it returns Spielberg to a creative-lead role he has not held since the first two films, puts Bay in line to direct a Transformers film for the first time since 2017, and arrives among the first franchise announcements since Paramount’s takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery closed.

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Bay’s status is where the reports diverge. Deadline describes his talks as early, adding that he has read the script and met with Spielberg this week. Page Six, in its own report the same day, called them final talks and said the one remaining sticking point is final cut, which Bay has been negotiating to secure. Both accounts can be true, since neither describes a signed deal, but they differ on how close one is, and no agreement has been announced.

Bay directed the first five films, from Transformers in 2007 through The Last Knight in 2017, which together grossed about $4.38 billion worldwide by Wikipedia’s tally, and he stayed on as a producer of Bumblebee and Rise of the Beasts after leaving the director’s chair. He has said goodbye before. After Age of Extinction in 2014 he decided against directing more, then said in a January 2016 interview that he would return for the fifth film and that it would be his last.

A return had been signaled earlier. Wikipedia’s account of the franchise records that in June 2025 Bay was reported attached to direct a new Transformers film based on an idea he had pitched to the studio, with Jordan VanDina writing, ahead of the Skydance merger closing that August. This week’s coverage centers on a different script and does not say how, or whether, the two projects are connected.

Bay’s schedule is not empty. His most recent directing credit is Ambulance, a 2022 thriller made at Universal Pictures, where he has a production deal. Earlier this year, TheWrap reported, the studio confirmed he would direct an untitled film about the April 2026 rescue of two U.S. airmen downed in Iran, to be adapted from Mitchell Zuckoff’s book due in 2027. This week’s coverage does not say how that project and Transformers would be sequenced.

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The script that moved both men is by Jason Fuchs, who co-created and ran HBO‘s It: Welcome to Derry and whose film credits include Pan, Ice Age: Continental Drift, It Chapter Two, and Argylle. TheWrap reported in June that Paramount had hired him to write an untitled Transformers film, noting that his screenwriting credits have grossed more than $1.9 billion worldwide. Di Bonaventura, Mark Vahradian, Bay, Tom DeSanto, and Don Murphy were listed as producers, with Spielberg and Hasbro Entertainment executive producing. According to Deadline’s account, Spielberg agreed to take the more active role after reading the script, and Bay was persuaded by the same read.

What the film is about remains under wraps. Variety reported that it is set in the present day and that the intention is a tone similar to the earlier Transformers movies, the ones Spielberg was more involved with. TheWrap’s June report said it would continue the story after Rise of the Beasts, whose post-credits scene had G.I. Joe offer Anthony Ramos’s character, Noah Diaz, a job. Bumblebee was set in the 1980s and Rise of the Beasts in the 1990s, so a present-day setting would bring the series back to the era of the Bay films.

Margot Robbie and @jason_blum have joined Cinema United’s Filmmaker Leadership Council bringing two major creative voices to the effort to champion the future of theatrical exhibition.

Read more: https://t.co/0CSfeQo2i3 https://t.co/Ky2IQz1kyx

— Cinema United (@cinema_united) September 29, 2026

Fuchs’s script is one of several Transformers projects at Paramount. Derek Connolly was hired in June 2024 to write a Transformers and G.I. Joe crossover, and Wikipedia records that Josh Cooley, who directed Transformers One, was reported in June 2025 to have signed on to direct a live-action Transformers film. At CinemaCon on April 16 the studio’s co-chairs confirmed that a new Transformers movie and a separate G.I. Joe movie were both in development, and the AP reported this week that Paramount has since announced a G.I. Joe film with Bradley Cooper, directed by Danny McBride, alongside the Spielberg-shaped Transformers project.

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Shia LaBeouf, who played Sam Witwicky in the first three films, is not returning, according to trade reports from The Hollywood Reporter and Variety. Other casting talks are described as premature, and there is no word on a storyline. LaBeouf appeared in Transformers, Revenge of the Fallen, and Dark of the Moon. For Age of Extinction in 2014, Mark Wahlberg took over the lead as a new character, Cade Yeager, and the human leads have changed with each new chapter since: Wahlberg for two films, then Hailee Steinfeld in Bumblebee and Anthony Ramos in Rise of the Beasts. Ramos said in July 2025 that the status of the planned Transformers and G.I. Joe crossover was uncertain because of the Skydance and Paramount merger, and no cast has been announced for the new film.

Bay has spoken warmly about LaBeouf recently. In a TMZ interview published in early September, he said the two had last spoken about six months earlier, when LaBeouf called after taking his daughter to the Transformers ride and told him the experience had moved him to tears. Bay called him a great actor and said he had enjoyed working with him. That conversation does not amount to a casting signal, and the reports this week say he will not be back.

Another absence is permanent. Peter Cullen, who voiced Optimus Prime from the original 1984 animated series through the live-action films, including Rise of the Beasts in 2023, died on August 26 at 85, six weeks before the Spielberg news. Cullen once said he built the voice as an impression of his brother Larry, a former Marine, and that Larry was still in his head every time he played Prime. Nothing in this week’s reporting addresses how the studio plans to handle the character’s voice.

Rolling out Happy Birthday wishes to Peter Cullen, aka the voice of Optimus Prime! https://t.co/cTrQ6Ucyo2

— Transformers (@transformers) July 28, 2023

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The franchise began as a detour. Producer Don Murphy was planning a G.I. Joe film when Hasbro suggested adapting Transformers instead, in the spring of 2003, and Tom DeSanto, a fan of the series, joined him. The toy line itself had grown out of two Japanese mecha lines, Diaclone and Microman, made by Takara, which merged with Tomy in 2006 to form Takara Tomy as a single company. That history gives the current G.I. Joe crossover talk an odd symmetry: the two Hasbro brands have shared continuity since Rise of the Beasts in 2023, and di Bonaventura has said actors from the G.I. Joe films may reprise their roles in future installments.

The original film set the template. Made with DreamWorks Pictures and released in July 2007, Transformers grossed $709.7 million worldwide against a budget reported between $145 million and $200 million, the fifth-highest total of that year. Revenge of the Fallen followed in 2009 and earned $836.3 million despite a 19 percent Rotten Tomatoes score, and Dark of the Moon in 2011 crossed $1.12 billion after Bay shot it in 3D with camera rigs developed by James Cameron’s team.

Then came the reset. With LaBeouf gone and Wahlberg in, Age of Extinction grossed $1.10 billion in 2014, $858.6 million of it outside North America, and was the highest-grossing film of that year. The Last Knight followed in 2017 with $605.4 million, the lowest total of Bay’s five, and the planned expansion stalled with it. In 2015 Paramount had hired Akiva Goldsman to run a writers’ room that pitched twelve stories for a Transformers cinematic universe. Goldsman left the franchise in August 2017, and a sequel to The Last Knight that had been dated for June 2019 came off the schedule.

Bumblebee, directed by Travis Knight and released in December 2018, shifted to a 1980s setting and a lighter tone, with Hailee Steinfeld in the lead. It holds a 91 percent Rotten Tomatoes score, the series high, and grossed about $468 million. Rise of the Beasts, directed by Steven Caple Jr. and set in the 1990s, followed in 2023 with a 51 percent score and the $441.7 million total. Paramount had announced it in 2022 as the first part of a new trilogy, and no follow-up has been made. Wikipedia describes the series’ overall reception as negative to mixed, Bumblebee excepted.

That leaves a large lifetime total and a shrinking recent one. The animated Transformers One took in $128.7 million in 2024, which TheWrap called the lowest total in the franchise’s history, and Hasbro announced that November that it would stop co-financing film adaptations and leave outside studios to fund them. Across all eight releases the series has still grossed more than $5.4 billion, a figure Deadline cites in its report.

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The timing follows a studio shake-up. Skydance took over Paramount in August 2025, and value reports that its new Paramount co-chairs, Josh Greenstein and Dana Goldberg, made reviving the franchise a priority and wanted Spielberg more involved in the next film’s development. Skydance was already a credited production company on Rise of the Beasts, so the new film is the first of the series under its ownership of the studio rather than its first involvement. Deadline adds that Transformers is one of a handful of properties gaining momentum at the new Paramount, alongside a World War Z sequel with Brad Pitt returning and Edward Berger directing.

The AP reported that Paramount’s $81 billion takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery closed on Tuesday, the same day the Spielberg news broke, and described continuity as the new company’s immediate emphasis. The same analysis noted that creators of non-franchise films worry about what will be left for them as the combined studio leans on proven properties.

No title, cast, or release date has been announced, and no deal for Bay has been confirmed. The film would be the first live-action Transformers since Rise of the Beasts in 2023 and the first Transformers feature of any kind since Transformers One in 2024.