While actor Peter Cullen has been the iconic, commanding voice of Optimus Prime for nearly 40 years, another actor is joining the ranks of the Autobot for a new Transformers movie. Chris Hemsworth (Thor) will pronounce a young and, one can only assume, handsome Optimus Prime for Transformers Onea new animated movie that promises the origin story of the leaders of the Autobots and Decepticons, Paramount Animation announced Thursday.
Transformers One also plays Brian Tyree Henry (Atlanta, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse) as young Megatron in a story about how the two most famous Transformers “went from brothers-in-arms to sworn enemies,” Paramount said. The story of Optimus Prime and Megatron’s childhood was previously explored in comics publisher IDW’s Transformers series (pictured above), but the animated film will likely take its own approach to young Optimus, when he was known as Orion Pax.
Joining Hemsworth and Henry in the cast of the animated film are Scarlett Johansson as Elita (aka Elita One, Optimus’ Autobot leader’s stand-in while away from Cybertron for a few million years); Keegan-Michael Key as Bumblebee; Jon Hamm as Sentinel Prime, the leader of the Autobots before Optimus took over; and Laurence Fishburne as Alpha Trion, one of the oldest, wisest Transformers.
Josh Cooley, the former Pixar artist and screenwriter who directed Toy story 4is at the helm Transformers One. Andrew Barrer and Gabriel Ferrari, who wrote together Ant-Man and the Wasp and those from Hulu No exitwrote the script.
Transformers One hits theaters July 19, 2024.