Paramount Delays ‘Transformers: Rise of the Beasts’ an Entire Year, Moves Next ‘Star Trek’ Movie Back Six Months

Paramount and Hasbro's Transformers: Rise of the Beasts

Despite COVID-19 winding down, and life going back to normal, studios are still shaking up their calendars, and Paramount is taking action again.

 

Yesterday, the studio announced (via The Hollywood Reporter) that two of their biggest franchises won’t debut a new installment for a while longer. The new Transformers movie, subtitled Rise of the Beasts, was previously aiming for a June 24, 2022, release date. It will now bow in theaters on June 9, 2023. And that is not it, because that day was going to be the release of the new Star Trek movie, which has now been pushed back until December 22, 2023.

 

Of course, the latter may be a reaction to the report published earlier this week which said that Patty Jenkins’ Star Wars: Rogue Squadron movie is most likely not going to meet its release date, which was announced to be Dec. 22, 2023. However, as we told you on Star Wars News Net, Lucasfilm may have a backup plan, with another project ready to go into production next year, which would mean that a Star Wars movie might still come out on that day. Speculation on which movie that will be is running wild at this point, and nothing is certain.

 

If this is the case, it looks like Paramount has lined up the Star Trek franchise to directly compete with Star Wars. The two have been in the same conversation for many decades, but in this day and age, there is no way a Star Trek movie is breaking even if it’s to compete with a Disney juggernaut, especially since its last movie couldn’t even make it on its own, during a desolate 2016 July.

 

On the other hand, Transformers: Rise of the Beasts is now close to wrapping production, if that hasn’t happened already, which means that either this move is purely strategical, or the movie needs more time to be finished. If this were the case, it will hopefully be more of a VFX problem rather than the necessity to reshoot parts of the movie next year. This is pure speculation at this point, since the studio didn’t offer an explanation.

 

 

As for who is doing what, Matt Shakman, who directed Marvel’s WandaVision Disney Plus series, is taking the director’s chair on the next Star Trek movie, though not much else is known at this point. Stephen Caple Jr. is coming off of a critical and box office hit in Creed II, and is now directing Rise of the Beasts, which stars In the Heights‘ Anthony Ramos.

 

Paramount has another big franchise, with a new installment coming next year — Mission: Impossible 7 is currently scheduled for a September 30, 2022, release date. Moreover, Tom Cruise, who stars in and produces that movie, has another big Paramount movie coming up in Top Gun: Maverick, which the rumor says will be coming out sometime in the next decade — it’s currently scheduled for May 27, 2022, three years after the original release date and roughly four years after they shot the movie.