Jeremy here...
I should be a grown-up and give Akiva Goldsman the benefit of the doubt here, but where's the fun in that?
After raising eyebrows by staffing Paramount's TRANSFORMERS writers room with seven white dudes (himself included), the Academy Award-winning screenwriter of A BEAUTIFUL MIND has hired Christina Hodson and Lindsey Beer to help expand the universe of robots that turn into cars and other cool shit. Hodson is a two-time Black List honoree for her screenplays SHUT IN and SEED. Last year, her spec script EDEN, said to be a "female-centric" science-fiction story, sold to Sony for somewhere around $750,000. She's a hugely in-demand writer, so this is no mere token hire. In fact, she's probably too good for this room.
Lindsey Beer is a Nicholl Fellowship honoree for her screenplay GAME OF THE GODS, and, as with Hodson, quite in-demand, having worked on the SHORT CIRCUIT remake, a family adventure flick called DIG for Disney and a WIZARD OF OZ reimagining for Warner Bros. She also studied neuroscience at Stanford, so, again, maybe she's wasting her time dreaming up stuff for Megatron to do.
But it's important to diversify the studio screenwriting pool, especially when it comes to tentpole properties like TRANSFORMERS. It's a step in the right direction, and, even though he couldn't write a decent screenplay with a Ouija Board and full access to Billy Wilder's spirit, I salute Goldsman.
