Paramount Pictures' plan to expand the "Transformers" franchise into a full-blown cinematic universe is slowly taking shape. After revealing in March that they want to see more "Transformers" movies made in the future, the film outfit started to bring together some of the best sci-fi genre experts to work in the writer's room for the franchise.
The studio earlier tapped Akiva Goldsman to supervise the planned pool of writers to work on the upcoming films, and he already picked some of the most notable scriptwriters in the industry to work with director Michael Bay, executive producer Steven Spielberg, and producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura.
This week, Deadline exclusively reported that Goldsman already developed his team roster, which includes the top names in writing sci-fi movies. The "Transformers" writing pool now consists of "The Walking Dead" creator Robert Kirkman, Art Marcum and Matt Holloway from the "Iron Man" movies, Zak Penn from "Pacific Rim 2" and "X-Men: The Last Stand," as well as "Lost" and "Fringe" series scriptwriter Jeff Pickner.
This development in the "Transformers" franchise means that the next movies will start rolling soon. The last film in the series was 2014's "Transformers: Age of Extinction," which became the 10<sup>th highest grossing film of all time, with over $1 billion box-office returns worldwide. The movie stars Mark Wahlberg, Kelsey Grammer, Nicola Peltz, and Stanley Tucci.
Wahlberg earlier revealed that he has an obligation to return for "a couple more" movies, which means that he would still star in the next film. Although there is no official confirmation from the studio, reports claim that Bay will return to helm "Transformers 5" as soon as he finishes working on the real-life war drama "13 Hours."
The "Transformers 5" movie is expected to be released sometime in summer 2017. The plot for the fifth installment in the franchise is still unrevealed at the moment.
