Transformers One, which looks into the origin story of Cybertron and how Optimus Prime and Megatron went from best friends to archnemeses, will be released in UK cinemas on Friday 11th October 2024. Chris Hemsworth voices the character Optimus Prime, taking over from Peter Cullen who voiced Optimus Prime for the last 40 years, Brian Tyree Henry is Megatron, Keegan-Michael Key is B-127 (Bumblebee) and Scarlett Johansson voices Elita-1.
There have been a variety of directors that have directed the films in the Transformers film franchise, but the latest one is directed by Josh Cooley, a director well known for his tremendous work at Pixar, including Toy Story 4, which he won an Academy Award for in 2020. This feature takes a look at his journey from starting his career as a storyboard artist to now directing the most iconic films of all time.
Josh Cooley’s passion for drawing started from a very young age. He always knew he wanted to be an animator but once he saw Who Framed Roger Rabbit at the tender age of 11, he knew he wanted to be a filmmaker.
Josh attended the Academy of Art in San Francisco, where he took part in a story class taught by a story artist at Pixar and also attended by the head of Story at Pixar at the time Joe Ranft. Josh showed Joe his work and then they stayed in contact. Five to six months later, Josh received a call from Joe which led to Josh starting his career as an intern in 2003 working as a storyboard artist on films including The Incredibles, the first two films of the Cars franchise, Ratatouille, and Up. He then worked his way up to a writer on Inside Out (whose screenplay he co-wrote) and directed the short film Riley’s First Date?
With Toy Story 4, Josh was initially brought on to co-direct it with John Lasseter, who had directed the first two films but in July 2017, John announced he was stepping away from directing to focus on his executive responsibilities at Pixar and Walt Disney Animation Studios. Josh went on to win an Oscar for Toy Story 4 in 2020, his feature directorial debut.
A month after winning the Oscar, he left Pixar and received the script for Transformers One, a film which took more than 5 years to make. He knew he had to get involved in the project as he felt that the script felt different from everything he expected with the word Transformer on it and the fact that Transformers fans have been waiting for a film about the origin story sealed the deal for him!
His collaboration with Lorenzo Di Bonaventura has now brought us here, days away from the release date so run to the cinemas on Friday 11th October.
