>>7973251The show's early premise is robots crash on weird world and must transform into animal for reasons. There's really nothing there that says tentpole audiences can't follow this premise. The fact that the 'weird world' turned out to be prehistoric Earth wasn't revealed until the second season. It wouldn't need to come up in the initial movie at all. Diehards are the only ones who would know the show's history. Normies will only see robots turning into animals.
Reminder: no Bay, DeS or DiB on this. We don't need autistic male and jailbait hottie to be the story focus to be a tentpole. TF alone can hold the audience, if the witty banter from the show is there. (RIP DiT)
Budget expectations: TLK cost $250m and made $600m. Bee cost $100m to produce and brought in almost 5 times that amount. Both made around $350m in profits, but the lower budget made Bee the more attractive film to woo investors. They're looking for BW $100-150m tops. So smallish cast again. Show as model, five x five in early drafts, but will probably get scaled down. If it can made half bn off of smallish budget like that, the studio will be happy.
Bee2 is headed the same direction, but on the higher end of budget scale since they want over a dozen characters. Check YT view counts on the Bee Cybertron scenes. That means something in today's world.
Reasons for BW before Bee2: in case of BW backlash, Bee2 would be a Ghostbuster Afterlife level peace offering. Best scenario: two complimentary franchises.
