In a series of tweets, director Michael Bay confirmed that filming for Transformers: The Last Knight had finished wrapping up towards the end of 2016, with more than a year and a half of development. To add even more fuel to the media fire, he also released a teaser video of clips and stills from filming, along with the full trailer, which you can see below, to kick start the hype machine for the 2017 movie release.
The fifth entry in the hugely popular series follows up on the big budget success of Transformers: Age Of Extinction, and with talk of a whole host of sequels, prequels and spinoff movies we’re expecting it to be the start of something big, as opposed to the end of an era. Bay may well have dealt himself out of the director’s chair for future releases, announcing that The Last Knight will be his last Transformers film, but it would appear that there’s plenty still to come from the lucrative movie franchise.
Release date
The film has been slated for a UK release date of the 23rd June 2017, however, that’s also the same date as the US release, so it may turn out to be a little later in the month before it comes out this side of the Atlantic. If it does arrive on that weekend, it’ll have competition from Scarlett Johannson comedy, Rock That Body, out in the UK a week before it, and French Marion Cotillard drama, Mal de pierres, on the same weekend, so it should have a good run at the box office. Although, Despicable Me 3 will be hot on its tail, giving it a short free reign on the big screen.
Story
Details for the plot of the fifth film are still pretty slim on the ground as snippets of info get released by Bay in the build up to the release later this year. What we now know for sure is that Optimus Prime and the remaining Autobots will be going head-to-head with a resurgent Megatron. However, from the look of the trailer it would appear as though Prime has blasted himself into cold storage before returning with a vengeance and wreaking havoc against Bumblebee, so it looks like it’s going to be carnage.
If that isn’t enough to take, you can add the presence of what looks like one of the planet-sized super transformers, Primus or Unicron, into the mix for what could be an epic adventure. Trailer 3 provides even more snippets on the story with a little more on the rational for Prime’s antagonistic presence in the trailers.
Transformers: The Last Knight trailer:
Cast
Mark Wallberg (Deepwater Horizon) is back in the lead role for Transformers: The Last Knight, having joined the franchise as Cade Yeager in Age Of Extinction. He’s joined this time around by a few of the previous stars of the earlier films with Josh Duhamel returning as William Lennox and Tyrese Gibson as Robert Epps, both N.E.S.T soldiers who last appeared in Transformers: Dark Of The Moon. Paul Cullen reprises his voice role as Optimus Prime for the fifth time too.
Newcomers to the franchise include Isabela Moner and Laura Haddock, who have both featured a lot on Bay’s Twitter page as he starts to crank up the media frenzy for the film. However, the biggest new addition to the cast is Sir Anthony Hopkins who appears to be playing a key role in the film from the look of the teaser filming reel that Bay released.
Production
Bay completes his fifth and final film in the series in the director’s chair with a story by Akiva Goldsman, Art Marcum, Matt Holloway and Ken Nolan. The screenplay was written by Marcum, Holloway and Nolan.
First impressions
We’ve been a little disappointed at times with the finer points in Bay’s Tranformers movies since the initial genius of the first film, so we’re a little cautious about The Last Knight. However, with Anthony Hopkins in the cast all bets are off, and with a strong trailer that looks as emotive as it is action and surprise-packed, Transformers: The Last Knight is starting to look like a contender. You can follow more on the film with the official Twitter page.
