Transformers as you’ve never seen them before in Bumblebee, director promises
- Travis Knight, director of sixth instalment in Hollywood blockbuster franchise, set out to ‘understand these transformers’ in film, a prequel set in 1987
- Producer hopeful of repeating success of previous Transformer films in China market, saying ‘Love, betrayal, fear’ – those are very universal feelings’
Travis Knight set out to make a Transformers film with a difference when he was brought in to direct Bumblebee, the latest episode in the blockbuster Hollywood franchise.
“I think we wanted to tell a great story with real emotion at the heart of it,” said Knight on Thursday in Hong Kong, where the film opens on December 27; it opens a week later, on January 4, in China.
Bumblebee: the most character-driven Transformers film yet
Michael Bay, who directed the two most recent films in the series, an executive producer, as is Steven Spielberg.
Bumblebee is the sixth instalment of the Transformers franchise, but a prequel. The action takes place in 1987, 20 years before the first movie in the series, and fleshes out the main character Bumblebee’s origin story. It stars Oscar-nominated Hailee Steinfeld, US professional wrestler and actor John Cena, and Jorge Lendeborg Jnr.