‘Transformers One’ Is Going to Change the Face of the Franchise [Exclusive] (2024)

At our early IMAX 3D screening of Transformers One, we were lucky enough to have a post-credits extended Q&A with the creative forces behind this epic animated feature. The movie tells the untold story of Optimus Prime (voiced by Chris Hemsworth) and Megatron (voiced by Brian Tyree Henry), depicting their origins and early relationship. Once bonded like brothers, together they change the fate of Cybertron, the home planet of the Transformers. A story this legendary takes a whole team of talented individuals, and spearheading this project were two very important players.

Lorenzo di Bonaventura is an absolute mega-producer. He specializes in franchises we love and has been doing so longer than many of us have been watching movies. If there’s high-concept adrenaline and massive set pieces, di Bonaventura probably had his hand in production. He’s brought us every live-action Transformers picture, G.I. Joe, Jack Ryan, and Pet Semetary — and that’s only with Paramount! Di Bonaventura also brought to fruition Salt, the Red series, The Meg flicks, our beloved Constantine, and even the notorious Madame Web.

Director Josh Cooley worked on the best of the best Pixar films since The Incredibles. Having helped shape Ratatouille, Up, and Inside Out, Cooley’s pedigree is second to none. He was given reign as director of Toy Story 4 and proudly won an Academy Award for his efforts. Now di Bonaventura and Cooley have teamed up for the all-new, fully animated by ILM, wholly badass Transformers One.

Following the IMAX 3D screening, courtesy of Paramount Pictures, Cooley and di Bonaventura sat down with Steve Weintraub and an entire theater of enthusiastic fans. Together, they discussed how they set the right tone for a proper Transformers film as opposed to something “too cartooney.” They also shared their take on future installments and revealed how early cuts of the film had audiences siding with Megatron. In addition, di Bonaventura talked about the upcoming Transformers / G.I. Joe crossover movie, whether Constantine Part Two will grace the silver screen sooner than later, and other future projects.

‘Transformers One’ is ‘So Much More’ in IMAX 3D

“They had such great restraint with it.”

COLLIDER: This is my first time seeing it in 3D and specifically in IMAX 3D. It's fantastic in 3D and in IMAX. When did you guys realize this might be real good in 3D?

JOSH COOLEY: I'll be honest, when we started to think about this film and just the scale of it and just going like, "Okay, Transformers is always about scale and regardless of whether they're on Earth, we can go even bigger on Cybertron," IMAX was always in the back of my brain. I love watching IMAX. Every shot, it was like, "Okay, what's this going to look like this?" Then, when we met with the 3D team and seeing what they were able to do and how they had such great restraint with it, it wasn't just like, "Let's just push it all away every time." It was really part of the storytelling, and this became my favorite way to watch it, what you guys just saw.

LORENZO DI BONAVENTURA: One of the things that I learned when the first two times we did 3D with the live-action films was I'd heard all the complaints about people getting headaches or eye aches and all the things. That's something that Josh and I talked a lot about, so that when you see this, we have consciously made decisions that stay away from the actual thing that would make you have a headache or an eye ache. But the most amazing thing when we first saw this, for me, was I'm expecting 3D to be visually more. What I found so surprising was character scenes were more. I can't really explain it, but you leaned in more. It was just, you could see the reactions more. It was really surprising and great.

It's also because ILM animated this. They haven't done an animated movie since Rango , and it just looks like you're on Cybertron. In every frame, there's so much cool stuff in the background.

COOLEY: That was always the goal, but it also is hard to do because you want to make sure that the audience is looking where they're looking at the right time. So, with so much detail, it came down to making sure that the lighting was really focusing our eye and just where we're looking from cut to cut.

It has to be gratifying for you to see what the critical reaction has been because you guys have been working on this for years. What's it been like having such a positive reaction to the film?

COOLEY: I'd say it feels good. [Laughs] You've been on this much longer, but when you're actually crafting a film for four years, to finally have it come out is one thing, just the feeling of that. Then, on top of that, to have people go, "Hey, I really enjoyed spending two hours watching what you just did for the last four years," it feels good.

DI BONAVENTURA: We haven't always gotten these kinds of reviews on Transformers, so I have to say, this felt a lot better.

Is ‘Transformers One’ Still The Beginning of a Trilogy?

“There's a lot of story in 300 million years.”

You have talked in the past about how you envisioned this as possibly a trilogy. With how well this turned out, I would imagine at the studio they're like, "Oh, this is pretty good." How much is that still the plan of you thinking of this as a trilogy?

DI BONAVENTURA: I don't think anything's changed for us. The truth of the matter is, you never get to the second movie unless everybody shows up at the box office. We both said to ourselves, "This is way too hard to make one good movie to start thinking a lot about the second movie." But along the way, there were ideas that we were like, "Well, that can't fit in here. Let's hold onto that. Let's not forget that idea." Although, I'm sure we've forgotten some of them.

COOLEY: Oh, I have them written down. [Laughs]

DI BONAVENTURA: Oh, you do?

COOLEY: I can't help but. Yes, we thinking of this one story for this moment, for this movie, but it's about towards the last year of a film where I can't help but go, "Well, how would this naturally progress?" So we've got some ideas. We talked about a few things, and we'll see what happens.

DI BONAVENTURA: We're not thinking of this as a trilogy because trilogies can be made and make a lot of money and do all that. Once we came up with the concept here of what happened to this friendship, we immediately went, “Then in the second movie, this is what happens between these two guys, and this is what happens between the third.” It's truly the character. We don't know the plots, but we know what the characters are going to go through, which is really interesting.

I don't want to do any spoilers because so many people haven't watched it yet, but you set it up in such a way that there's a lot more story to tell. So if you do get to make another movie, it's not just, "Oh, let's make another movie." There are things to resolve.

COOLEY: Absolutely. Just in the natural lore of Transformers, these two don't get along; there's a war that breaks out, and they have to go to Earth, so there's naturally more story to tell.

DI BONAVENTURA: I think there's something like 3 billion years between this time and Michael Bay, although there's some people who would say it's 300 million. But either case, there's a lot of story in 300 million years.

ILM’s Stunning, Emotional Animation May Affect the Live-Action Films

"I don't think we can go back now."

Talk a little bit about actually getting ILM to animate it because the animation is fantastic, and they did such a wonderful job with the material. Was it tough to get them to do it? Talk about the behind the scenes.

COOLEY: To get them on board, I don't think it was that tough. Once they agreed to do it, all the animators were so excited. Because they were like me. We grew up watching the original cartoon, watching the movies. Now it was their chance to not just do an individual shot, like an effect shot, but actually take a whole moment and animate a character doing a whole moment.

DI BONAVENTURA: Maybe Wētā doing some of the live-action spurred them. Wētā kind of crushed it on the last movie in live-action. Maybe there's a little competitiveness going on there. But they've been part of seven movies with us and they are hardcore fans. The idea of this movie, I think once they understood what we were going to go for, it became pretty easy to convince them.

In the live-action movies, every second of animation costs a ridiculous amount of money so is limited on character development. One of the reasons this movie, I think, is so effective — and I think you guys have talked about it in the past — is that it's all character in the animation. Talk a little bit about how the animation lets you really get into the characters.

DI BONAVENTURA: What's fascinating for me is — because you're absolutely right, we have been restricted because in live-action — essentially, we've been boxed in a little bit in terms of how much characterization we can do with the robots. We do it with the humans, not the robots. Now we have no humans. So, we get to stuff all that emotion and feeling into the robots.

It's actually going to create a reaction to the live-action because I don't think we can go back now. Now we're going to have to figure out the economics of that, because one, as a filmmaker, I love these, and I now understand both Megatron and Optimus more than I ever understood them before. Josh is used to what is possible in animation. I have always found it restrictive in our case, and I think that's really exciting. Also, the other thing it does is give you the robots' point of view, which is different from what we've done in live-action. That's also something that we have to explore now in live-action.

COOLEY: I think that's exciting though. Obviously, it's a different take on it, but what was really intriguing to me from the very first moments we started talking about this film was telling a human story with these robots. These are characters that we already have an expectation, we know about them, we know about the antagonism between the two characters, but to see them when they were friends and then see that relationship fall apart, I was like, "Oh, that's something I definitely want to see."

DI BONAVENTURA: That's really what got you on board.

COOLEY: Yeah, that human relationship.

Animation is "Action! Camera! Lights!"

“One of the good blessings and curses of animation is you can keep changing things up to the last minute.”

People don't realize that every shot in animation also costs a lot of money. Talk a little bit about what the shot or sequence was that everyone begged you not to do because it was going to be incredibly expensive and time-consuming.

COOLEY: Nobody begged me not to do anything, but I can tell that the scene where it's the flashback in the cave, and it's all made out of dust, and it's swirling around everybody, as I was pitching that to ILM saying, "Okay, it's a flashback, but it's in the same space as them, and it's 40 characters and it's all made of dust, and they're fighting everything," I can see them kind of glaze over. They're like, "Okay, okay." They're going, "How in the hell are we going to do this?" But that's what's so great about ILM — you can throw anything at them, and it's always like, "That's cool. We'll figure out a way to do it."

I'm so curious about the editing room because it's where it comes together. You should explain to people with an animated movie how different it is in the editing room when compared to live-action in the fact that you can basically just keep making it until you have a version that you're happy with.

COOLEY: The editors are on for the entire length of the movie. One of the good blessings and curses of animation is you can keep changing things up to the last minute. We basically made, I want to say, six or seven versions of the movie in storyboards with temp music, temp dialogue, that you could actually sit and watch on the big screen. When you're in editorial, we'll be watching the sequence, and if it's like, "Oh, this is not working," you don't need to get the actors back and reshoot it all. We can go, "What if we did this?" We just sketch out some quick storyboards, scan those in, they're immediately on the screen, and then I grab my iPhone and go, "What if Optimus says, 'Blah, blah, blah, blah,'" Then I record it, send it to the editor right there, we immediately have version of it. It is a really quick, rough draft, dirty version of things, and we just keep refining it and refining it until, at a certain point, we're like, "Hey, this feels good." Then we call Chris Hemsworth and get him to voice it, and then it gets animated afterward. An easy way of putting it is live-action’s, "Lights! Camera! Action!" Animation is, "Action! Camera! Lights!" [Laughs]

DI BONAVENTURA: But you know what else is interesting? And again, I think we're going to cross-pollinate now in terms of technique, is having spent so much time dealing with the scale of the robots, and how do you present them, and how do you show them at the best angle? We were able to communicate that to Josh about the lessons we've learned, and then he could apply them in the way he wanted to or not. In editorial, we actually had one of our live-action Transformer editors come in and explain some of the angles that we've learned over the years and how that's done. It was really an interesting thing.

COOLEY: That was fascinating.

DI BONAVENTURA: And the movie's better for it. Now we're going to take some of the techniques we've learned in animation and play some of that into the live-action for sure.

COOLEY: This is just, for example, a very simple idea, but at the beginning of the movie, where Orion Pax and D-16 are much smaller than everybody else, so there are a lot of angles where the cameras are up above them shooting down, so they feel smaller in the frame. By the end of the movie, or once they start bulking up, the camera starts to lower. So that shot where they both land and everybody's standing up just feels more powerful. They actually feel bigger even though there's nothing else around them. It's filmmaking techniques like that. You shouldn't notice it, you should just feel it as an audience member. But it's great to have experience from people who worked on seven other films with these characters.

‘Transformers One’ Isn’t Just a New Movie, It’s a New Experience

“I think animation is going to continue its good run.”

Lorenzo, this is the first Transformers animated movie since '86. Did you ever come close to making an animated movie before this one? Either way, what makes now the right time to tell this story?

DI BONAVENTURA: I was briefly the head of Warner Bros. Animation and greenlit [The] Iron Giant, so that's the only one I've worked on before now.

Nothing that people liked. Yeah, no one liked that movie. [Laughs]

DI BONAVENTURA: Every once in a while you get lucky. Actually, what's interesting about this one is when we were debating what the second Transformers movie should be, this story came into our consciousness. We were so intrigued by it that every single time we would come up with another movie, we'd go, "All right, well, maybe we should do that story." For two reasons, I think. One is, I don't know that you could accomplish this in live-action, and if you could, it would be beyond staggering. The idea of a transforming planet in live-action, I'll just say Paramount would look at us and go, "No, we're not going to do that." But I think it's the power of this story, and also we were having success with live-action. And so, finally, one of the things that we felt really strongly about is, for those of you who have supported all the movies, it was time to give you a new experience — not just a new movie, a new experience. That's when this thing came into being.

Well, the other thing is that animation, to me, feels like it's more popular than ever when it comes to adult animation, when it comes to animation across the platforms. Do you feel that also? Are you both noticing that?

COOLEY: I will say that I noticed that. I say because of Spider-Verse, the very first Spider-Verse. I remember watching the trailer. I was working at Pixar at the time, and I went, "Oh, the game has just changed." I could just feel it. Because the aesthetic of that film tied into the story. It was like, you can only tell that story with that style of animation. I love how successful that was because I had a feeling. And you can see it with the popularity of animation now. It's not just that there are more animated films, it's that the styles are different now, and audiences are welcoming that, and studios are finally seeing that they're welcoming that. So, it's exciting.

DI BONAVENTURA: One of the interesting things for me was, I think we've been stuck in film portraying alien planets as these sorts of post-apocalyptic desert-scape, not very interesting places to be. This gave us an opportunity to do something so colorful and so imaginative, and all those aspects of what you saw today were opened up because it was an animation. I think in that respect, you're right; I think animation is going to continue its good run. I don't know if it'll get bigger or not, but I think it'll stay, at minimum, where it is right now, which is really a large aspect of going to the movies.

Early Cuts of ‘Transformers One’ Had Audiences Siding With Megatron

I'm always fascinated how things change during development. Were there any characters that came close to being in it? What were the big changes that happened along the way?

COOLEY: I would say the biggest change, because we were trying to find it the entire time, was just the tone of the film. Early on, say, the first draft of it, not in a bad way, was more cartooney. It had a little more tongue-in-cheek, kind of like it knew it was having a good time.

DI BONAVENTURA: Younger.

COOLEY: And younger. It felt that way. After we put up the first version of it, it was like, "Oh, this just doesn't feel right. It didn't feel like Transformers." We all wanted to make sure that it still felt like a Transformers film, not just a cartoon that had the word Transformers on it. But the characters, I don't really remember characters changing.

DI BONAVENTURA: I've never experienced this part in development where the power of our understanding of who Optimus and Megatron is kept intruding on our development of Orion Pax and D-16. What would happen is we'd write a scene, and then we'd go, "He's already acting like Optimus. He's not Optimus yet." It really showed the power of those characters and how much that affected us, that even when we knew we were writing for two other characters — the early manifestations of these characters — it kept getting overwhelmed. That took a long time.

I think the other thing that took a long time was the transformation of D-16 to his villainy, or let's call it his authoritarian streak. That was very tricky. That kept changing all the way up to the end. Because if you did it too early, people were like, "Wait, why?" If you did it too late, it just felt wrong. Somewhere, fairly late in the process, we just realized that Sentinel, the adoration of Sentinel, was the key to his turn. So we milked those earlier scenes to show how much he was into Sentinel.

COOLEY: So he felt betrayed by his hero. That was the important thing. The more evil we made Sentinel, the more the audience would understand where D-16 was coming from. In fact, we had a version, I'd say probably a year out, where the audience went like, "Well, I kind of agree with D-16. I agree with Megatron. He should have done it." We're like, "Uh-oh, we went too far." [Laughs]

DI BONAVENTURA: They were like, "No, Optimus is wrong on this one." We were like, "Okay, all right."

COOLEY: How we fix that is by having it be clear, the movie was over. They revealed the truth, and Optimus/Orion said, "It's over. We're done." And that's where D-16's like, "I'm not done. I'm going to keep going." So that became that moment of, "Okay, he stepped over the line."

‘Transformers One’ Has Two Post-Credit Scenes

I don't want to say what they are because people are filming, and I don't want it to get out, but you have two after-credits scenes, a mid-credits and something at the end. How much did you debate what those were going to be, and were either of them almost something else?

DI BONAVENTURA: I'll say this, the placement changed. Particularly the end credit scene, at one point we had very close, right up to the other endings of the movie, if you would. Then it just felt, in a way, too early, and you didn't get the chance to celebrate the fact. There's some darkness in the film, so we wanted the audience to have some fun. Then Josh came up with the idea of the mid-credit sequence. We heard you guys laugh, so it worked. That allowed the audience to kind of go, "All right, we feel good." Then, if you have the patience to wait until the end, then you get to know what could be coming in the next movie.

‘Transformers One’ Sequels Can’t Be Produced Easier Or Faster

“We were tortured about finding the tone in the first movie. We now know the tone.”

Looking back on the making of this film, I'm curious because, making the first film, you need to learn so much in terms of how the robots are going to look and how things are going to move. There's so much infrastructure that you're building. What were some of the big things you learned that could help you if you do get to make a sequel? Do you think that if you were to be able to make one, it would be able to be done faster because of infrastructure that you learned, or is it still going to be four years?

COOLEY: [Laughs] Sorry, I laugh because I've worked on sequels before and the first thing people think is that it's easier and faster.

Oh, I don't think the story's easier. I don't know. What the hell do I know?

COOLEY: No, what you're saying is for this protagonist, lead character, this is the most important thing that's happened in their life. The sequel's like, "Okay, well, this is the second most important thing." Then they're on and on. So in sequels, there's always something you don't anticipate, probably with every movie. But I would say that one of the things that was a surprise that I didn't even think about early on was the design of our characters. They're basically football players that have helmets on the whole time, and they can't move that helmet. So if you've got a shot from back here, I'm like, "Oh, it'd be cool to see the edge of their mouth." It's like, "Oh, you can't see it. They've got a helmet on." We did some cheats where this is the brim where you don't notice it, but it will tilt up...

DI BONAVENTURA: What you meant is "stylistic improvements."

COOLEY: Trying to get it down to one answer, yeah. We would look at more of their style and just see how to make things read better.

DI BONAVENTURA: I actually think the one thing that will be easier is, we were tortured about finding the tone in the first movie. We now know the tone. I'm a huge believer that if you get the tone right, the audience has a good time. Even if you didn't make the best movie, but if you had the right tone, the audience is with you. If you made a perfect movie, but the tone feels off, the audience is not with you. That's the scariest thing when you're putting it together is, "Is it funny enough? Is it too funny? Is it too dark?" All those things. We've now at least found that equilibrium. I think in some respects, that's probably the only thing that will make the second part easier.

COOLEY: Yeah, their relationship's different now, so for the tone, we have something to start with for sure.

What’s In A Transformers Name?

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Transformers One Director Talks Easter Eggs, Alt Versions, More

The film's called Transformers One. I read that at what point you were considering Transformers: A New Generation ?

COOLEY: That's not true.

Oh, so was it always Transformers One from the get-go?

COOLEY: No, but I remember when that came out online, I was like, "New Generation?" Somebody made that up, but that was not us.

My question is, was it always Transformers One or did you at any point have a different title that you're like, "Oh, that's pretty good?"

COOLEY: There was a whole list.

DI BONAVENTURA: Nothing that we really liked, actually. There were a bunch of ideas, but none of them landed. Then I don't remember who came up with Transformers One.

COOLEY: I don't either, but I do remember thinking, "I like the boldness of it." Because it's not just the first one, but the all-or-one, it is part of the theme of the movie. So I was like, "Okay, I'm digging that." And then the logo is just like: "ONE!" That's cool.

I thought you were going to do "Bad-ass-atron."

COOLEY: I can't do that. That's Keegan [-Michael Key].

DI BONAVENTURA: How great is Keegan?

He's fantastic. If you do get to make a sequel, will it be called Transformers Two, or will it be called like, Transformers- colon- something ?

COOLEY: Transformers One 2.

But you know what I mean?

DI BONAVENTURA: Yes, I'll be categorical and say it's not Transformers Two.

Josh, you did a few voices in this. How did you decide which characters you wanted to voice?

COOLEY: Like I was saying earlier, I would grab my phone, just do the line in there and send to the editor. I didn't cast myself, actually, it was the editor. She's like, "I'm leaving that in there." I said, "Lynn, we can find somebody to record it." She was like, "No, I'm leaving it." So she cast me in there, but it was just out of necessity, really.

Do you want to tell people the characters you played?

COOLEY: Sure. I'm: “WHAT?!” That guy.

DI BONAVENTURA: Is that a character name?

COOLEY: It is now! I'm the, "Dr. Ratchet, Dr. Ratchet," after the race — the announcer. Then there was one more. Oh, it's the, "I'm sorry, you can't be in here." And then Bee tries to kill me.

Kenneth Branagh and ‘Braveheart’ Inspired ‘Transformers One’

I think the voices in this are all perfectly cast, but why was it important to have new people voicing iconic characters?

DI BONAVENTURA: It's a new story. Actually, I think the best way to describe it is, Peter Cullen has done a phenomenal job of being Optimus Prime. Who doesn't love Peter Cullen? Who doesn't associate him with Optimus Prime? That was the biggest thing for us, was like, "Wow, are we really going to change here?" But you needed to, because Orion Pax is a very different character than Optimus. Peter's voice has age and a battle-scarred weariness to it that doesn't help Orion Pax. That was the biggest, "Oh boy, here we go." Chris was able to do, I'll say both sides of it, which is bringing in the fact that here he is, a slightly naive, exuberant daydreamer, and by the end, you kind of start hearing echoes of Peter and the gravitas he had. So he was great, but I think Josh should talk to all the other characters.

COOLEY: It's all about that arc, Orion Pax's. I remember we talked a lot with Chris about that and just making sure it felt like he's not just mirroring Peter, but also there was a change to his voice. As he becomes more confident, that first time he's really with all the other miners, cheering them or getting them pumped up, you can really start to hear the phrasing of his voice start to change. So it was like, "Okay, he's going to start becoming that character."

With D-16, it was kind of the same where I wanted to make sure that the audience falls in love with him at the beginning of the movie. He can't come in going, "I'm Megatron." You've got to be like, "Oh yeah, I want to be friends with that guy." And Brian Tyree Henry, that's who he is. He's a phenomenal actor, obviously. He was able to make that change. When we did those recording sessions with him, when he's finally turning into Megatron, it was terrifying. He really went there.

DI BONAVENTURA: He's going to have fun when it really gets dark. But one thing, as he was saying it, and an earlier question you asked about something that had changed, talk about the pep talk. What was so interesting is that was one of the hardest scenes to do was, "Let's go, let's fight." We did several versions of it, not very far apart, but several versions of it, and something kept missing. Somehow you were like, "Did they really go and fight now? They've been so downtrodden for so long."

COOLEY: We were thinking from their point of view, from the miners' point of view, which is somebody shows up who's now more... I'm trying to think of the human quality. What's the equal to that? If somebody we all knew ran in here, ripped, and is just like, "We've got to kill the president!" "Oh, why? What's going on?" That's basically what's happening in that movie. We're like, "How do we make this scene convincing but also not super long?" We were talking about scenes in other movies where you've got somebody really pumping up the rest of the group.

DI BONAVENTURA: The Crispin's Day speech by [Kenneth] Branagh.

COOLEY: Braveheart.

DI BONAVENTURA: We started watching all these scenes to see what it was that was working. You can never transpose it, but you can feel the difference.

COOLEY: I was even looking at how the shots were composed in those scenes, just to see how you get the group on board. But the key was, and Lorenzo hit it, you need them to push back. So instead of going , "Yeah, you're right. Let's go." They need to be going, "What the heck are you talking about?" That's what we would really do. "How are we supposed to do that? That's not possible." So every time before he gets into this big rousing speech, they're constantly saying, "How? No. Can't do that. No." Then he says, "No, we can." It was that back and forth that made it work.

DI BONAVENTURA: And that last-second decision that we actually have his chest open up and show the cog. That's the thing where you feel those miners looking at that cog, going, "I want one. This isn't right. Let's go get one." I think that was a huge, huge discovery, very late in the game.

Producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura and Director Josh Cooley Could Not Tell This Story In 85 Minutes

Did you guys end up with any completed or close to completed animation that didn't make the finished film?

COOLEY: I'm proud to say we did not.

Okay.

COOLEY: That's usually where you lose a ton of money.

100%.

COOLEY: We did not.

So the movie's an hour and 40-something.

DI BONAVENTURA: 95 minutes.

COOLEY: The actual movie's 95 minutes.

Again, it's expensive to animate everything. Did you ever say, "Let's try to do 90 minutes." How did you decide on that runtime?

DI BONAVENTURA: I would say the studio had a fair amount of pressure on us.

COOLEY: Studio wants it to be 15 minutes.

DI BONAVENTURA: No, 85.

COOLEY: 85.

DI BONAVENTURA: It was, "85." We're like, "We cannot tell this story in that 85 [minutes]." And look, they're not doing anything wrong. They're just looking at it and saying, "How much money are we willing to spend?" But we picked a story you couldn't tell in 85 minutes. I will say this: a couple of times, we made some sacrifices of not doing something for a little while and then screened it, and, to the studio's credit, they were like, "You're right. Go ahead. Go do it." So even though it was a little bit of reluctance, they got there each time, which is great. Both Josh and I feel that it's great to have a push and pull with somebody because if you can do anything, in a way, you lose the pressure of cutting, the pressure of making choices. So, we were under pressure.

Detailing the ‘G.I. Joe / Transformers’ Crossover with Lorenzo di Bonaventura

I love that there are no humans in it, but at any point, did someone say, "Can we get a kid or some humans?"

COOLEY: No, it was honestly never brought up. Nobody said, "Could we have baby Transformer turned into a stroller?" [Laughs] It was never in the cards.

I really do think that when audiences see this, they're going to want to see more. How do you envision, in an ideal world, the next few years of Transformers? Do you envision trying to possibly tell the animated story? Do you think live-action will fit in with this? And part two of this — of course, I know you're developing a G.I. Joe / Transformers, so what's the future the way you see it?

DI BONAVENTURA: Again, subject to success, we're going to do a sequel to this, and there will be an animated version, and it will exist completely separately from whatever we do in live-action. The next live-action movie will be a crossover. Where it will be particularly affected is the fact that we now know what these robots are capable of emotionally. So, we're going to have to figure out how to create that room that we can afford that and create a story where you can take more advantage of that.

One of the things that I'm particularly interested in doing, and we're still in the development phase, so nothing is by any means written in stone, but I think we need to do more now from the robot point of view in the live-action, because that's the only way you're really going to get inside them. Instead of them reacting to humans or reacting to the human plot, "What is their drive?” has to be part of that story now. So it's going to be complicated because now the hardest thing about a lot of franchise movies is how many characters there are, and the more characters you try to manage, the harder it is to make a bunch of really good ones. You've kind of got to keep it smaller, keep it smaller.

We'll be in that process for a while, where we'll start with a bunch of Joes and a bunch of Transformers and, I'll say, regular humans, and then you're going to do this. That's kind of where we are right now, is trying to put the larger thing in place. The trick in this one, like we were talking about here, in trying to find that tone and balance is like, "Well, how much of the Joes do you want? And how much of the Transformers do you want?"

I see what you're saying at the beginning. There's a bunch, and then all of a sudden, something happens, and the MacGuffin is they need to have two Transformers and two G.I. Joes go do something.

DI BONAVENTURA: Ideally, if you can bring it down to that. That's right. It is a process of finding a story and then adjusting the story. Then it's not working and why isn't it working and all the things that go through this process. But to me, the crossover terminology makes me nervous because, to me, when somebody says that, it sounds like it's supposed to be 50/50 or something. That's just me. Maybe I'm wrong. I think if we try to do 50/50, it's going to feel imbalanced. You're never going to spend enough time and sort of forward momentum. You've got to explain 50% and 50%. I'm not quite sure how to get around that, but there will be a lot of Joe activity, a lot of Transformer activity, and a lot of human activity. Maybe it'll be a third / a third/ a third. I don't know. It won't naturally find itself that way.

I've been waiting for a Transformers/G.I. Joe team-up since I was a little kid. You have your work cut out for you on this one.

With a Transformers/G.I. Joe crossover, you need to appeal to the G.I. Joe fans, you need to appeal to the Transformers fans, and you need to appeal to people who have never seen anything. With this, you had to do the same thing. You needed to appeal to die-hard Transformers fans, but also to people who have never seen it. Talk a little bit about pulling that off and also the fact that you have to try to do it again with a much stronger level of difficulty.

COOLEY: I'll say for this film, I am a Transformers fan, and the entire crew and cast are, so we were always holding ourselves to that part, so that wasn't an issue. But the bigger thing, I think, was actually, "How do we do it in a way where we're allowing people who don't know Transformers to come into the film in a way that's really clear, but also not just spoon-feeding it to fans already?" That was the biggest challenge. There's so much Transformers lore — there is so much. The way that was simplest in my mind was, "What do we need that will tell the story for Optimus and Megatron's relationship? If that's the key, that's the thread throughout this entire movie, what do we need to tell that story?"

I won't put you on the spot.

DI BONAVENTURA: I'm going to be sleepless. That's for sure. It's going to be a long run here. I'm trying to figure this one out.

How Close Are We To 'Constantine 2?'

We're just about out of time, but I do have to ask you. You know that I am a kind of a fan of Constantine , and we've talked about this a lot over the years. What is the status of Constantine 2 ?

DI BONAVENTURA: There is a script which I have not read.

COOLEY: I read it.

DI BONAVENTURA: He stole it from my desk. No, I haven't read it yet. Akiva Goldsman wrote it and I am super excited. I'm going to read it this weekend.

Are you really?

DI BONAVENTURA: Yeah. Really.

Oh, so the timing is crazy for me asking this.

DI BONAVENTURA: Indeed, it is.

COOLEY: You ask every week.

You know what's funny? I put you on the spot at Comic-Con. I asked about it, but it's been two months since then.

DI BONAVENTURA: Akiva's been hard work.

Yeah, exactly.

DI BONAVENTURA: God bless him.

When he wasn't on stage. What's coming up for you in terms of other things? Because I know you are always developing.

DI BONAVENTURA: Hopefully two other movies. One is a submarine movie, and it is a unique sort of point of view in how to look at a submarine movie. I'm excited about it. It has the aspirations of a Hunt for Red October or any one of the Das Boot. It's sort of the two of those movies, in a funny way, because claustrophobia plays a huge part of it, and yet it plays on quite a large scale. And The Saint, which is creeping towards a green light at Paramount. So, hopefully a new version of it, very much driven by the books and the Roger Moore TV show.

Yes. I say yes.

DI BONAVENTURA: Have you ever seen it?

I saw the Val Kilmer one.

DI BONAVENTURA: There you go. Where it first started was a television show in England, and it was awesome.

Who's this is Roger Moore character? I'm not familiar with his work.

DI BONAVENTURA: Bond.

I did know that. Yeah, I'm joking. I did know that.

DI BONAVENTURA: But no, he played a great version of The Saint, which was less of a wink. I didn't love the Val version personally, as a character, because I grew up on the other one. You know how that is, you come to term. Roger Moore's character was very cheeky, he was very sly, and he was supremely confident without letting you know. He didn't wear it on his sleeve as much as it felt like to me with the Val movie, which didn't feel like The Saint to me.

Lorenzo di Bonaventura’s Future Plans With Director Josh Cooley

“I hope that I'll be lucky to work with him both on another animated movie and a live-action picture.”

I'm going to ask you the last question. I don't know if you're going to answer this, but are you planning on taking another project or are you waiting to see how this does?

COOLEY: No. [Laughs] I just finished this one. Time for vacation.

DI BONAVENTURA: But you know what? We have been talking about things, and I think Josh is a natural to make the transition to live-action, as well. I hope that I'll be lucky to work with him both on another animated movie and a live-action picture — which we haven't figured out yet, but we both know where we want to go with it.

COOLEY: Thanks, Lorenzo!

DI BONAVENTURA: Yeah. No, not everybody can make that transition. I've been involved in a few of them, and one was very successful, which was Bumblebee, which Travis [Knight] had come from animation, and the other was less than successful. We'll leave that one out. Kind of a disaster, really. So, having learned how Josh directs, that's the key. And watching him work with the voice cast that we have. I have to say it's an intimidating cast. You have great actors and big movie stars; you have nowhere to hide. Watching him manage that process, he understands cinema, he understands how to handle actors. We can give him some of the tools that he may not know today, but he'll learn them in three days.

It's also about surrounding someone with a good crew.

DI BONAVENTURA: 100%.

COOLEY: Absolutely.

Transformers One is in theaters and IMAX now.

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Transformers One

Not Yet Rated

Animation

Action

Adventure

Sci-Fi

The untold origin story of Optimus Prime and Megatron, better known as sworn enemies, but once were friends bonded like brothers who changed the fate of Cybertron forever.

Director

Josh Cooley

Cast

Chris Hemsworth , Brian Tyree Henry , Scarlett Johansson , keegan-michael key , Steve Buscemi , Laurence Fishburne , Jon Hamm , Vanessa Liguori , Jon Bailey , Jason Konopisos-Alvarez , Evan Michael Lee , James Remar , Isaac C. Singleton Jr. , Steve Blum , Jinny Chung , Josh Cooley , Dillon Bryan

Runtime

104 Minutes

Studio(s)

Entertainment One , Hasbro , Nickelodeon Movies

Distributor(s)

Paramount Pictures

Franchise(s)

Transformers

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