After what we can only assume was years of believing that women lacked the finger dexterity required to convert a robot into a car (you’ve really gotta force some of those little bits), Paramount and Michael Bay have finally relented and allowed some girls into the underground chamber where all of the Transformers movies are written. This comes from Deadline, which says the lucky (?) women are Christina Hodson and Lindsey Beer, and it sounds like this isn’t even a punishment for them. They’re choosing to do it! Baffling.
Both Beer and Hodson are relatively unproven as far as actual produced films go, but Hodson wrote the screenplay for the upcoming Naomi Watts-starring thriller Shut In and has a bunch of other projects in the works, including a pilot for FX. Beer worked on the Short Circuit remake, which probably gave her a lot of insight into the psychology of robots who are alive. Also, Deadline notes that “she studied neuroscience and the intersection of technology and society at Stanford.” There’s a lesson in there for today’s college kids: Work hard, go to a good school, and someday you too can write a Transformers movie!
As we’ve previously reported, the writer’s room that Beer and Hodson are joining also contains a similarly overqualified Robert Kirkman, as well as the writers behind Iron Man, the upcoming Ready Player One adaptation, and The Amazing Spider-Man 2. If rumors—and common sense—are to be believed, one of the things they’re working on is a Bumblebee movie. Also, with more women behind the scenes now, maybe future Transformers films will be able to limit themselves to one or two shamelessly pandering shots of women bending over car engines or straddling motorcycles instead of one or two hundred.