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Transformers: Prime Concept Art by Jose Lopez

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Waiting for Transformers: The Last Knight Trailer - What We Know So Far (Potential Spoilers)

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• Producer Lorenzo Di Bonaventura says The Last Knight is going to explore the mythology of how Transformers “were created, where did it start, where did they go from being a sort of a slave-race to a sentient race–we’re delving into that aspect of the mythology, so the characters that are involved in there are Megatron before he’s Megatron, Optimus before he’s Optimus, the Librarian, the Quintessons, there’s a whole group of things that have to do with how, in a sense, the Transformers were birthed, and also with how they were divided. What brought up the division, and what were the jealousies involved.”
  
• The film will have two parallel stories that are leading to the same place, all surrounding one mythology. Di Bonaventura said, “They’re part of the same mythology, but the fact that these two pieces could interrelate, and have quite a span in time in which we’re trying to draw from–one is, in the Transformers’ mythology, billions of years ago, and one is hundreds of years ago, so in that sense, those two ideas came together. At first, we thought maybe they were two different movies, and then they came together.”
  
• Regarding how much The Last Knight sets up the Bumblebee spinoff and future sequels, Di Bonaventura says, “you’ve got to be careful with that stuff, because then you start thinking about the other movies and not about the one you’re making. I would say, we definitely spent some time going “How does this link up and where are these other things going to go?” So I think in their initial construction in the writer’s room, and the initial sort of thinking, we spent a lot of time on that, thinking about the interrelationship.” He went on to say, “some of the things will have a very direct relationship. You’ll see some things in here that are laying a pipe. You won’t necessarily know that it’s laying a pipe for another movie, but it’s there. So there’s probably, in a really meaningful way, two or three things in this movie that really have a meaningful aspect…and then there’s a bunch of little things. But we’re not making this movie to set up the other movies.”
  
• With Paramount and Hasbro hoping to make a number of future Transformers movies, Di Bonaventura revealed they have outlines for six and seven. However, they haven’t started writing the scripts because they didn’t want to rush them and needed to see how The Last Knight would change during filming.
  
• Santiago Cabrera plays a mercenary who’s out to get all the Transformers. He says, “I was a SEAL but I’ve retired and I’m on contract, I’ve been hired –The TRF (stands for the Transformers Response Force) has been formed to fight the Transformers, so my orders are I don’t care if they’re Autobots or Decepticons, we gotta stop this war. So I’m a team leader and I’ve come with my team to fight them and what I find and when I see Cade Yeager is harboring them he becomes the enemy basically.”
  
• Josh Duhamel says NEST is not part of the film. During an interview, he revealed that it’s a bit of a mystery who he is working for in the film. He explained, “Am I with the US military, the Army, or am I working with a group that’s trying to eradicate all Transformers? Not just Decepticons, but all of them. There’s a bit of a struggle between myself and Santiago Cabrera, and then we’re also working against [Mark] Wahlberg’s character in this. Because he’s definitely working with the Autobots. It’s just a lot of big fun movie shit that we get to do. And what brought me back personally is the fact that you get to do stuff that you don’t get to do anywhere else. Michael [Bay] does stuff bigger than anybody I’ve ever worked with, for sure.”
  
• Isabela Moner describes her character as a tomboy and says when we meet her she’s homeless and joins Mark Wahlberg and the team in defeating the Deceptions. She’s also the one that brings Sqweeks, who is a mini-Transformer Vespa, into the group as they’ve been together for a while. Apparently Sqkweeks is broken, so the only thing he can say is chihuahua. Moner’s character lost her family in the battle of Chicago.
  
• Hot Rod is in the film and he’s got a French accent, but he’s not from France. Bay said “he just likes the accent.”

Kabam Mobile MMO Transformers: Forged to Fight Interview

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Developer Kabam and toy company Hasbro today announced Transformers: Forged to Fight, a mobile game based on the well-known franchise.

Described as a "high-definition, action-fighting role-playing game with strategy elements," Forged to Fight claims to offer trademark Transformers action. You will assemble an "ultimate" team of Transformers, including Autobots and Decepticons from across almost every era of the Transformers history, and then do battle. The game is set in a colorful 3D world, and battles take place in a number of varied and unique arenas. Click through the images in the gallery below to get a closer look.

The game is set in a "strange new world where multiple realities collide," which in turn creates a "massive planetary battlefield." So, you know, Transformers stuff. Some of the features include 1v1 battles, RPG elements described as being "deep," and base-rading. Some of the playable Transformers include Optimus Prime, Bumblebee, Megatron, Starscream, and Grimlock. These characters can be leveled up through gameplay, unlocking more abilities over time.

Forged to Fight enters beta in some territories soon, and will be released widely across the world in Spring 2017. The game is in development at Kabam Vancouver, which is the studio that made Fast & Furious: Legacy and Marvel Contest of Champions.

[...]

The release teases a "unique" story that goes beyond purely good and evil--what more can you say on that front--and is this canon?

McCartney: We've worked closely with our partners at Hasbro to create the story of our game. In doing so we've ingested every classic cartoon, comic book, movie, that you can imagine. Our team has immersed ourselves in the Transformers Universe in order to understand each character’s unique personality and quirks. As the game begins Optimus Prime is returning to his home planet of Cybertron after many years of conflict on earth. During the course of his travels his ship encounters a strange anomaly in space and crash lands on a strange planet. Through the course of the game Optimus is attempting to unravel the mystery and escape the planet.

[...]

How much freedom are you afforded in the Transformers universe? It's obviously a massive, revered franchise--but I'm guessing you want to push things forward with your own unique voice, so to speak, as well.

McCartney: We work closely with our partners at Hasbro to ensure that we stay true to the franchise and lore established over the course of the last 30+ years. We also take the history of the Transformers franchise very seriously. For example, before we start work on a new character we have a bit of a classroom session for everyone working in that character. Our Transformers experts walk everyone through the history of the character and his / her personality traits. This gets everyone in the right mindset before starting work on a character. With regard to the story and character dialogue, Hasbro has been amazing. They give us the freedom to create our own vision and then feedback if something isn't true to lore, or if we're pushing something too far. For the most part this interaction has been minimal. We're excited about continuing work with Hasbro in the future and we have a lot of ideas we can't wait to collaborate on.

IDW Hasbro Comics Crossover: Revolution - More Than Meets the Eye Roche / Burcham Cover Variant Art

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TFcon Chicago 2016 Guest Update - Gregg Berger

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We are happy to welcome the voice of Generation 1 Grimlock Gregg Berger to TFcon Chicago 2016. He also voiced Skyfire (Jetfire), Long Haul and Outback in the same series. He thenreturned to the character of Grimlock for the Fall of Cybertron video game as well as Transformers: Devastation.

Gregg will be taking part in Q&A panels and autograph sessions with the attendees of the world’s largest fan-run Transformers convention all weekend long.

Additional BotCon 2016 Updates - Gregg Berger Now Attending, Registration Closes March 21 and Hints to the Future of the Transformers Collectors' Club

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Hello Members!

We have some exciting news! On Friday afternoon, BotCon registered attendees will be treated to a script reading panel starring Judd Nelson, David Kaye, Venus Terzo, and Gregg Berger! To see this you must be a registered attendee, so make sure you have signed up for your Primus, Golden Ticket Primus, MiniCon or Protoform package. Also, for those who have already registered, if you have not yet added your Judd Nelson VIP Pass to your existing package you can do that today! Visit BotCon for the details and then if you need to register, add the VIP pass or do both, you can do that here.

As you can tell from the above paragraph, there has been a guest change. Unfortunately due to personal reasons, Scott McNeil had to cancel. However, Gregg Berger will now be coming! We will all miss Scott, but we are very excited about seeing our old friend Gregg in a few short weeks.

Registration will close on March 21st so there is not much time left to register. Currently there are only 30% of the Primus packages, 8% of the GT packages and 19% of the Iacon (non-attending) packages, left.

Please note that March 16 is the last day you can join the Transformers Collectors Club. If you are interested in receiving the discounts for BotCon, the 2016 FREE Membership Incentive figure and/or purchasing the TFSS 5.0 (to be revealed in full at BotCon 2016) you will need to be an active member as of March 16. All memberships will end December 31, 2016. Hasbro looks forward to sharing new plans for the Collector’s Club with you in the future.

We appreciate your support over the last 12 years and wish the brand well in their new endeavors.

Transformers: Earth Wars - Space Ape Founders Interview: Windblade, Slipstream, Gameplay

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The studio [Space Ape Games] has, so far, made its name as something of a specialist in what its founders call 'build and battlers', the mid-core asynchronous multiplayer genre established to such great success by Supercell and Clash of Clans. It's already had two successes in the genre: Samurai Siege and Rival Kingdoms, but now Earner and Hade are looking to take the next step with the attachment of a globally recognised IP in the shifting shape of Hasbro's Transformers for its new game Earth Wars.

"I guess you could say it's the modern take on classic Transformers, where the characters are bigger, chunkier and more colourful, rather than the [Michael] Bay-style, which uses more organic characters," says product owner Chris White when I ask if they're tying Earth Wars to the Bay-directed films. "It works very well for us because they're very readable when they're small."

[...]

"Talking to a lot of the Transformer fans we have over the course of development, it's amazing how many of them haven't played any games in this genre before," says White. "Whereas you'd expect everyone to have played Clash of Clans, they actually haven't, so we're introducing them to the genre for the first time. One really interesting thing we saw during development, when we were getting Transformers fans in, is that, as a developer you've obviously seen a lot of games, a lot of tutorials. You start to think that everyone must know how this works, that you need to teach the player something different. Actually, there's tons of Transformers fans out there that don't know the mechanics of the genre, or indeed any game.

"It's easy to be cynical, having played tons of games in the genre and developed a few of them, but then you realise that maybe in some areas you've actually gone a little too far with the innovation and you need to dial it back a bit and give people something they're more familiar with."

[...]

"Transformers is huge in Asia," Earner corrects me. "We have the rights to launch the game globally, we secured the rights via Takara to introduce the game to Japan, which is the only territory where Hasbro doesn't have the rights, but there's a long and productive relationship between the two. So it's not so much that we don't have plans for Asia, it's that Asia requires an extra amount of detail. We won't go live in those countries on day one because we want to put real time into it.

"A pleasant surprise for me, having spent a week in China last year: we always knew that China had become excited about what we call 'Bay-led' Transformers. Bay-led is a country or person whose introduction to the brand comes from the recent films. France is Bay-led, believe it or not, as is China. We suspected that, as a result they might not recognise some of the characters, such as Grimlock. But the mid-core player on the coast of China is also male, 28-45. They know this stuff and they love it, so we're extremely optimistic about it, but like you say, they're a different market, you can't just come at it straight."

IDW Deviations Transformers - Interview with Brandon Easton and Priscilla Tramontano

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In March, IDW Publishing is revisiting classic moments from it's most popular franchises in a series of thematic one-shots subtitled "Deviations," and for the Transformers it doesn't get any bigger than the original Transformers: The Movie. Transformers: Deviations revisits the classic G1 era to ask "what if Optimus Prime didn't die and was there to stand against Unicron?"

Transformers: Deviations is by writer Brandon Easton and veteran Transformers artist Priscilla Tramantano, and we spoke to them about this unique opportunity -- and oh yeah, we talk about that epic soundtrack as well.

Newsarama: Brandon, what is Transformers: Deviations about?

Brandon Easton: This is a spin on the extremely popular alternate universe concept seen in sci-fi stories and graphic novels for decades. The idea that we get to peek into a different continuity where events took a strange turn and a whole new reality is born is difficult to resist. In Transformers Deviations, we speculate on the one of the biggest moments in Transformers history – the death of Optimus Prime from the classic Transformers: The Movie (1986).

The story explores the events of the original Generation One Transformers timeline if Optimus Prime had not been critically injured by Megatron in their fateful battle in Autobot City. Anyone who knows the movie and the subsequent stories from the third season of the classic TV series knows that Optimus’ death was a central point in the saga and if he survives a wholly divergent and complex wall of dominoes tumble erratically. We get a universe that deviates from the original timeline in a very interesting way.

So in a nutshell, it’s “What if Optimus Prime survived?”

[...]

Nrama: Who are the characters that take center stage in this one?

Easton: Without ruining too much, I will say that Optimus, Hot Rod and Starscream get a lot of “screen time.” There’s a lot more I could say, but I’d rather have people check out the book when it hits the stores.

Tramontano: Grimlock is a favorite of mine and he plays a big part in the movie so it'll be cool to revisit that. But I'm looking forward to the Starscream coronation gag. It´s such an iconic scene, probably my favorite scene out of the 1986 movie, and I want to see how fans will react to this new spin Brandon gave to it!

Nrama: And is there anyone you wish you could have drawn but didn't?

Tramontano: Well, I love Galvatron but sadly he won't be in this.

[...]

Nrama: This is an interesting concept -- the idea of an alternate history. What does this offer for you two as a writer and artist respectively, and do you see potential for doing it more with Transformers?

Tramontano: As a fan, it's very common for us to play within established universe, drawing fan art, writing fanfics and so on. Imagining what could have been if something had happened differently is part of the fun. I like this idea a great deal. Now, as an artist, things get more complicated because you're dealing with something that people love with all their hearts and you have to be able to tell them you're not trying to replace the original material but just add a new version. I sincerely hope people are open-minded about this book and like the result. Reading Brandon's script, I know I did (as an artist and as a fan).

Easton: Alternate history stories are a sub-genre of speculative fiction and they’re great ways to explore socio-political concepts without alienating readers. I would point to the works of Harry Turtledove or Bryce Zabel to see some compelling takes on how different the world would be if a critical moment in history went in another direction.

Personally, as a writer of speculative fiction and a former U.S. History teacher, I adore alternate histories because they allow us to engage in a different kind of world-building exercise that forces us to work within grounded constraints while still pushing the boundaries of what is/was possible.

TFcon 2015 Charlotte Guest Update - Gregg Berger

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We are happy to welcome the voice of Generation 1 Grimlock Gregg Berger to TFcon Charlotte. He also voiced Skyfire (Jetfire), Long Haul and Outback in the same series. He returned to the character of Grimlock for the Fall of Cybertron video game as well as the upcoming Transformers: Devastation.

Gregg will be taking part in Q&A panels and autograph sessions with the attendees of the world’s largest fan-run Transformers convention all weekend long.

IDW Transformers: More Than Meets the Eye #46 Alex Milne / Josh Perez Clean Cover

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