Michelle Yeoh (Everything Everywhere All at Once) and Pete Davidson (The King of Staten Island) have signed on to lend their voices to next year's Transformers: Rise of the Beasts. The film, directed by Steven Caple Jr. (Creed II), will serve as a soft reboot for the Michael Bay series which originated in 2007. The Beast Wars storyline will serve as the film's concept, with this being the big screen introduction to the Maximals, Predacons, and Terrorcons, three distinct factions of Transformers.
Davidson has been cast as Mirage, an Autobot whose disguise is a silver-blue Porsche 964. This character did appear in 2011's Transformers: Dark of the Moon, voiced by the late Francesco Quinn. Yeoh will lend her voice to the Maximal known as Airazor. This character's disguise is a peregrine falcon, following the custom of Maximals disguising as animals. Only one other Maximal has been cast in Optimus Primal, with Ron Perlman (Hellboy) voicing the character.
Anthony Ramos (In the Heights) and Dominique Fishback (Judas and the Black Messiah) portray the film's human leads. Ramos has been cast as an ex-military electronics expert named Noah, while Fishback is Elena, an artifact researcher who works in a museum. Additionally, Peter Cullen will return to lend his iconic voice to Optimus Prime, following the precedent of voicing the infamous Autobot from the cartoons to the live action films. Luna Lauren Vélez and Tobe Nwigwe have been cast in undisclosed roles. Filming concluded on the project nearly a year ago.
Plot details on Rise of the Beasts are thin, though the film takes place in 1994 and follows Brooklyn-based archaeologists on a globe-trotting adventure alongside the Maximals, Predacons, and Terrorcons. The latter are a group of villainous Decepticons who disguise as monsters.The Predacons also predominantly appear as villains, and Rise of the Beasts will have their disguised forms as vehicles. Transformer variations are nothing new for the film series, with the Dinobots making their debut in 2014's Transformers: Age of Extinction.
Rise of the Beasts will mark the first Transformers film since 2018's Bumblebee, which starred Hailee Steinfeld and John Cena. Like Rise of the Beasts, Bumblebee served as an offshoot to the primary Transformers film storyline, taking place in the 1980s and serving as a prequel of sorts to the titular Autobot. Since that film debuted, Paramount has been eager to continue the franchise, getting to work on Rise of the Beasts. A Bumblebee sequel has also been in development, though news has not been forthcoming. Bay remains onboard as a producer for Rise of the Beasts.
Transformers: Rise of the Beasts lands in theaters on June 9, 2023. Check out Caple Jr.'s post announcing the new castings below: