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Steven Caple Jr.

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We're so proud of him.

Steven Caple Jr. (born February 16, 1988) is an American director and screenwriter. His first claim to prominence was when his student film, A Different Tree won HBO's short competition in 2013. This would lead him to his directorial debut, The Land, released in 2016 at the Sundance Film Festival, and the 2018 sequel to Creed, Creed II two years later.

At the time of the age of 33, Caple Jr. is the youngest filmmaker and the first person of color to helm a live-action Transformers film.

Contents

Directing work

Notes

  • Steven Caple Jr. was initially skeptical of working on a Transformers movie, which at that point in development was being called Bumblebee 2, because he was uncertain about jumping right into another sequel after directing Creed II—however, the incorporation of elements inspired by Beast Wars, which Caple Jr. had been a fan of, helped sway him. Upon joining the project, he pitched several revisions, drawing from his enthusiasm for The Transformers: The Movie by adding Unicron (and the Terrorcons) and Noah's exosuit, along with a prologue on the Maximals' homeworld and a new arc for Optimus Prime centered around his initial misanthropy.[1]
  • Tobe Nwigwe's character of Reek in Rise of the Beasts was based on a friend of Steven Caple Jr.'s, who passed away before shooting began in 2021.[2]
  • During Rise of the Beast's premier conference in Singapore, when asked which character he would like to bring to the films, Steven Caple Jr. stated that -as a big Beast Wars fan- he would love to introduce the character "Ratatatat", who he describes as a "snakey character who had a lisp".[3]

Reference

  1. ↑ "The first time that- I did Creed 2, and the first time the studio ever knocked on my door, it was for Bumblebee 2. And I was like, "I don't want to do- I just came out from Creed 2, I don't want to do a sequel..." you know? And so a year had gone by—or maybe two, right before COVID—and they said, "we found out the story we want to tackle: we want to bring in Beast Wars." I was like, "I know all about Beast Wars, I'm down for Beast Wars." And so they developed a script on their own, they passed it to me—2020, October 5th, I remember the date—and I jumped right in and I kind of did my own version of the pitch, I said: "I love where you guys are going, you guys want to do New York, you guys want to do the 90s, you want to do Peru, but here's what I'll do, with the characters..." So I changed up Optimus Prime, I gave him a whole pitch on how I would start him with like, not loving humans at first, and not besiding Noah right off the rip, they're gonna have friction between the two... Gave 'em a pitch for Optimus Primal, where they start off in the top of the movie, and I gave them a new Unicron- I mean a new villain, which was Unicron and the Terrorcon squad. I just felt like, as a fan, we've been tiptoeing around Unicron, and all the other films kind of like hinted towards him towards the end, and I just really want to expand the universe and I felt like he was that perfect source to do so, because he tells us there's another world out there, there's more Transformers out there, it's not just Autobots and Decepticons. And then of course the exosuit, that was my idea, it was homage to the 80s cartoon, so... It was a bit of that, pitched it to 'em and they loved the heart, they love where I was going with the direction of the characters, and yeah, they kind of gave me the key to play!"—Steven Caple Jr., Collider, "Transformers: Rise of the Beasts Interview: Director Reveals Big Change to Film", 2023/06/06
  2. ↑ "The way I got the Transformers role was insane. [...] One of [Steven Caple Jr.'s] best friends was a fan of the music, and his best friend, right, like, as they was getting ready to start shooting the movie... passed. Passed, yeah. And he had Paramount Studios reach out to me to try to play a specific- the best friend role in Transformers. They kind of emulated who his best friend was in real life. He told Paramount [...] "reach out to Tobe and if he send anything back that's even halfway decent... I want to use him." But because I had never done no acting ever in my life, I just had this script right here, and just read it like I was acting, and just recorded myself on the iPhone and I was like, "yo there's no way in hell..." [...] I did that, sent that in, and they liked it!"—Tobe Nwigwe, Sway's Universe, 2023/01/23
  3. ↑ Transformers: Rise Of The Beasts Singapore News Conference

External links

Interviews

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