Under Goldner’s direction, the Transformers action figures and animation returned in 2002 to the characters and stories introduced in the 1980s. After those toys became successful, Hasbro issued updated versions of its 1980s-era G.I. Joe warriors and their Cobra enemies. The objective, Goldner said, was not only to sell toys, but also to show the film industry that, cinematically speaking, they were no different from Spider-Man or Batman.
In 2003, Goldner learned that the film producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura was developing an action movie called The Last Soldier and believed that the project could be adapted into a G.I. Joe film. Instead Di Bonaventura, a former Warner Brothers executive who had worked with Hasbro on toys licensed from its Batman, Harry Potter and Scooby-Doo franchises, saw a potential film in G.I. Joe’s roster of stylized soldiers with code names like Duke, Ripcord and Heavy Duty.
The series “never really killed off any characters,” Di Bonaventura said, “so there was a lot of interesting back story and interrelationships.”
Assembling the Transformers creative team took more convincing. Like Bay, the screenwriters Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman (Star Trek) were reluctant to be involved. “There’s no win in a screenwriter for this,” Orci said. “It’s going to be a giant toy commercial no matter what we do.”
But they too were won over by the same weekend-long presentation that had captivated Bay in the summer of 2005.
In their Transformers screenplay Orci and Kurtzman tinkered with the origins of the robots and the war that drew them to Earth. But they tried to remain true to the spirit of characters like Optimus Prime, a heroic Transformer who turns into a big-rig truck.
“Optimus was like an Arthurian knight, and he was the noble leader of this resistance force that was fighting against a much stronger foe,” Orci said. “That led us to a lot of the key characters that were the most known and loved by Transformers fans.”
The worldwide success of the first Transformers movie (despite some scathing reviews) ensured that both a G.I. Joe movie and two Transformers sequels could move forward at Paramount. (The third Transformers movie will come out in 2011.)
Hasbro, meanwhile, is continuing to expand its presence in Hollywood. Last year it announced a deal with Universal in which at least four more of its best-known brands, including board games like Monopoly, Battleship and Candyland, would be turned into movies by industry heavyweights like Ridley Scott and Gore Verbinski.
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