Netflix has announced that it will be teaming up with Hasbro and Rooster Teeth to bring a new Transformers origin series to the streaming platform. Promising a new animated style, Transformers: War for Cybertron will premiere on Netflix sometime in 2020. The series will be animated by Japanese studio Polygon Pictures, who previously worked on the beloved series Star Wars: The Clone Wars.
"In this Transformers origin story, we will explore the expansive universe of Cybertron in a way that audiences have never seen before - to the delight of both existing fans and those coming to the franchise for the first time," Netflix's director of Anime John Derderian explained in a statement. "The Transformers brand is a global phenomenon and we are thrilled to partner with Hasbro, Rooster Teeth and Polygon to bring this exciting new series to our members around the world on Netflix."
A number of veterans from the Transformers series will be joining the production of War for Cybertron, with FJ DeSanto—who wrote and produced a handful of Transformers mini-series—serving as the showrunner. "Transformers has a rich history of great storytelling and War for Cybertron is an exciting new chapter in the Transformers Universe," added Hasbro's Transformers franchise Senior Vice President Tom Warner.
It's somewhat surprising that Netflix is going all in on the franchise, after the first spin-off of the Transformers series of live-action movies, Bumblebee, didn't fare too well at the domestic box office when it premiered last year. Grossing almost $126 million at the U.S. box office on a production budget of $135 million, Bumblebee made an impressive 72% of its gross overseas. The film grossed $332 million in foreign markets, with most of that coming from China. Overall, it grossed $458 million, making it the weakest performing live-action Transformers movie so far.
