Josh Cooley To Helm Animated 'Transformers' Prequel For Hasbro/eOne & Paramount

Deadline is reporting that Toy Story 4 director Josh Cooley has been picked by Hasbro’s entertainment studio eOne and Paramount to direct a big scale Transformers theatrical prequel that sources said focuses on an origin story. It takes place on Cybertron, the planet from which the good-guy and bad-guy robots came from. The film revolves around the relationship between Optimus Prime and Megatron.

The film will have nothing to do with any of the live action Transformers film series and the Bumblebee spinoff. Hasbro/eOne is running point on the production of this film as making a big scale animated feature is easier than a live action tent pole because so much of the work can be done while respecting social distancing. That is an issue in the acceleration of the Transformers animated film, which has more or less begun production.

The script was written by Andrew Barrer & Gabriel Ferrari and have been working on the animated film for several years. Both are credited with production work on Ant-Man and were the credited writers on Ant-Man and the Wasp.

Josh Cooley is fresh from winning an Oscar for Best Animated Film for Toy Story 4 and Lorenzo di Bonaventura, Mark Vahradian and Hasbro/eOne are expected producers.