John Cena Joins Transformers Bumblebee Spinoff Movie, Release Date Announced

The upcoming Transformers spinoff Bumblebee has started production, and it now has a confirmed release date. The movie will arrive in theaters on December 21, 2018, and in addition, many of the cast have been revealed.

The film will star Hailee Steinfeld (True Grit), alongside WWE star John Cena. The cast also includes Jorge Lendeborg (Spider-Man: Homecoming), Jason Drucker (Diary of Wimpy Kid), Ricardo Hoyos (The Belko Experiment), and Gracie Dzienny (Chasing Life).

A synopsis has been released. It reads, "On the run in the year 1987, Bumblebee finds refuge in a junkyard in a small Californian beach town. Charlie, on the cusp of turning 18 and trying to find her place in the world, discovers Bumblebee, battle-scarred and broken. When Charlie revives him, she quickly learns this is no ordinary, yellow VW bug."

Bumblebee will be directed by Travis Knight. Although it is Knight's live-action debut, he helmed last year's Oscar-nominated animated movie Kubo And The Two Strings, and as president of the Laika animation studio he has overseen such acclaimed movies as Boxtrolls, ParaNorman, and Coraline.

In a recent interview with Screenrant, Transformers produdcer Lorenzo Di Bonaventura explained that Bumblebee would be different in tone from the main movies in the franchise. "It's a more intimate movie," he said. "It's a little bit like Iron Giant which I worked on many years ago. It's a smaller story but it's still about these larger issues, the same sort of titanic clashes occur.

"But it's a female lead, the relationship she and Bumblebee develop is very different than what we've seen before. And so I think people are going to love the intimacy of that movie in contrast to some of the big ."

Bumblebee is the first movie in what Paramount hopes will be an ongoing spinoff universe of Transformers movies. The latest film was this summer's Transformers: The Last Knight, but although it has made $568.9 million worldwide so far, it is the lowing grossing movie of the franchise to date.