ILM’s Transformers One Tells a ‘Biblical’ Optimus Story

While the 2023 box office gross Transformers: Rise of the Beasts While it doesn’t compare to the highest peaks of the Michael Bay era, it was still a big enough success that fans of the robots in disguise can expect a sequel in the future (and one with a toyline crossover twist). But before Transformers 8fans of the robots in disguise will Transformers Onein theaters this month. Transformers film series producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura tells Polygon that the film is big — perhaps the biggest Transformers story his team has brought to the screen yet.

“You couldn’t make this movie live-action,” he says during the press tour for Transformers: Rise of the Beasts‘ digital release last year. “If we were to do it in live action, it would cost twice as much as we would normally spend on a big Transformers movie. In animation, not only can we afford it, it’s cheaper than a Transformers movie. We can do things in animation… I mean, imagine being on Cybertron? What does Cybertron really look like? We get to define that.”

Transformers One turns back the clock on the war between Autobots and Decepticons and shakes up the casting: Chris Hemsworth has been cast as the voice of a young Optimus Prime, replacing series stalwart Peter Cullen, while recent Atlanta Star and Oscar nominee Bryan Tyree Henry replaces Frank Welker as the voice of Megatron. Rounding out the cast are Scarlett Johansson as Elita One, Keegan-Michael Key as Bumblebee, Jon Hamm as Sentinel Prime, and Laurence Fishburne as Alpha Trion. And yes, it’s all set on Cybertron.

Transformers One marks the first fully animated feature film from the artists of Industrial Light & Magic since 2011 Rangoon (although the company also worked on George Lucas’s fairy-tale curiosities Strange magicbut let’s focus on Rangoon). Di Bonaventura, who rightly preaches Rangoon as “quite spectacular” in this writer’s opinion, says that films like Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and the upcoming Paramount Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem may have opened the door for a fully animated Transformers film, but the only stylistic common thread is that Transformers OneILM, director Josh Cooley (Toy Story 4), and the entire team is “creating its own version of originality.” But in service of what?

“I’ve always wanted to do the origin story of essentially the friendship between Megatron and Optimus, who were then Orion Pax and D-16,” di Bonaventura says with authentic giddiness. “There’s something very biblical about it, very Cain and Abel, in many ways. But it’s more sophisticated in a way because it’s about power and the use of power and how an individual is personal.”

Transformers One will be in theaters from September 20.