When it was announced this summer that John Barber would be stepping away from IDW's Transformers as the senior editor, people were wondering why?
Today, we find out from the Hollywood Reporter who have had a chance to talk with John and Cullen Bunn about the Hasbro Cinematic Universe, and plans to literally transform the the many properties we are seeing under Revolution, into its own universe of movies as well.
This shouldn't come as big surprise to those watching Hollywood soak up every popular culture franchise starting with DC and Marvel comics, followed by 1980s Cartoons, and beyond with even board games such as Clue, Monopoly, and the Ouija board slated for theaters near you.
With the Transformers movies setting the stage at $1+ billion in ticket sales. Hasbro have pretty much set a new standard for toy to movie films, both in America and Internationally. Talking with John Barber and Cullen Bunn, we learn that Revolution is the first round of characters being primed (pun) for the Hollywood runway with films for MASK, Micronauts, My Little Pony, and GI Joe. Which has been a challenge for Hasbro to roll out, with the two Joe films recieving lack-luster results at the box office.
Well, IDW Editor-in-Chief Chris Ryall and I flew out to Hasbro headquarters in Rhode Island to pitch this to people at Hasbro, and they were totally onboard. They let us know their plans are in terms of the movie universe, and where they’re going with the characters that are in Revolution — and several that aren’t. So we had a lay of the land, but we’re out far ahead of some of those movie plans. I mean, clearly the M.A.S.K. comic is hitting years before a M.A.S.K. movie.
They worked a lot with Cullen and I when Cullen was putting the Micronauts outline together—there were characters they’d developed for the future they wanted to see. Same thing with M.A.S.K. and Rom. They’re the stewards of these characters, so understandably, every once in a while they’ll have a “We want to go somewhere else with Flash from G.I. Joe” or whatnot, but it was really more of everybody at Hasbro being really supportive and suggesting cool new things and adding toys to the toybox.
I mean, Chris and our editor David Hedgecock were all-in on this series. And Ted Adams at IDW was very enthusiastic, and I think all of them — plus [IDW President] Greg Goldstein, who was instrumental — helped make sure Hasbro knew how serious we were. And as always, Michael Kelly at Hasbro was one of the earliest sounding boards and was key in developing the series into what it is. And once we were out sitting down with Derryl DePriest and Mark Weber and everybody at Hasbro, we really were able to gather the materials and build this thing up.
That's quite of cast of character's getting behind this with IDW leading the charge as part of their new focus on movie production, this could turn out to be a real force in a few years when these properties are finally produced for the big-screen.
Read the full interview for more details on Revolution and more at
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/hasbros-gi-joe-transformers-more-931454 
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