No audio from Optimus Prime: Awakening has been released.
Since Hasbro gave the short a name on September 1, it has been a poster and a credits block, and no footage. What we have is twelve minutes of runtime, Peter Cullen’s last original performance as Prime, Frank Welker opposite him as Megatron and Soundwave, and a line on the poster reading MUSIC BY BOBBY KRLIC. Krlic scored Midsommar and Beef, and nobody at Hasbro or Fathom has said a word about what that would sound like under a G1 Optimus Prime.
Then Hasbro and Collider ran a prerelease screening with Fathom Entertainment, in California, in the days before September 9. TFW2005 has gathered the accounts and the photographs from four people who were there. Attendees watched the full 1986 film and then the short, under a no-spoiler embargo, and one of them describes the terms plainly: they got to watch it early and in exchange consented to being filmed and to a post-screening “interview”, so the footage could be used on social media. He says the invitation turned up on his Instagram feed.
Two of the four then posted on Reddit, and the coverage since has been built on that thread.
What the score sounds like
Reddit user u/One_Swimmer_7039 opened a thread on r/transformers on September 9 headed “I saw Optimus Prime Awakening early. No Spoilers but it is incredible”, and the first substantive answer in it came from another attendee, u/Lotso2004, when somebody asked how the score sounded:
“Absolutely amazing. I need this short to come out officially already because I need that soundtrack on my playlist yesterday.”
Pressed on whether it sounds like the 1986 music, he was more specific:
“Yes and no. Harkened back to the movie at times but also sounded newer. There’s a bit of an edge to it, kinda like Nine Inch Nails. Reaaaallly good.”
Vince DiCola wrote the 1986 score straight off Rocky IV: synths, guitars, and a lot of us can still hum the Autobot City siege from memory. Lotso2004 heard that film in Krlic’s work at times, but he heard something newer over the top of it, with an edge he compares to Nine Inch Nails. The rest of us hear it on September 17.
The rest of what came back is shorter. Asked whether the screening was the short alone or the whole bill, One_Swimmer_7039 confirmed they got the full movie and the short. Asked what to expect: “It’ll make you cry.” [1]
A Q&A, and one line about how it got made
One of the photographs shows something the written reports skate past: a Q&A on the theatre floor, two men on chairs in front of a screen carrying the Awakening title card and the tags @transformersofficial and @collider.
The short’s director took the questions, and the line TFW2005 carries out of that Q&A is that the film was a labour of love spearheaded by Zev Foreman of Hasbro films. Foreman is credited as a producer on the poster, alongside Cyrus Warner, so the name is not new; the account of who pushed for the short is. TFW2005 also reports that the animation is 3D, but that it looked like 2D.
What the room went home with
Everybody got a Studio Series Deluxe out of it, one figure per person. Read off the box fronts in the photographs, the four on the table are Sunstreaker, Kranix, Wheeljack and Windcharger, each of them carrying the small TRANSFORMERS THE MOVIE badge on the bottom panel beside the character name. Kranix is a nice touch for a screening of this film, given how long he lasts in it! They handed out Awakening posters too, the yellow one with the speed-lines and the ghosted second Prime behind the first.
The four giveaway figures, photographed at the screening. Attendee photograph, via TFW2005.
It opens to the rest of us on the seventeenth
The film returns to cinemas on September 17, and Fathom’s release page says that “every screening also includes the world premiere of OPTIMUS PRIME: AWAKENING”. Hasbro’s July announcement said “select anniversary screenings”. Both sentences are still up, so our tickets page tells you to check what your own cinema is listing rather than to trust either. [2]
If you want something from the film in your hands before then, the Studio Series Matrix of Leadership is in stock at BigBadToyStore at $124.99, read off the listing this morning. Hasbro’s own copy describes an extendable frame, a core whose lights brighten as the frame is pulled open, and “The Touch” playing when it does. Stan Bush’s 2026 reworking of that song is what the Celebration of Life concert for Cullen was built around in August.
Cullen died on August 27, three weeks before the last thing he recorded as Optimus Prime goes back on a cinema screen. A room of strangers in California has heard it already. On September 17, so do we.
Sources
- The Transformers: The Movie 40th Anniversary Early World Premiere - TFW2005, September 9, 2026, crediting 2005 Boards members LRJ2007 and Drewskee, Reddit user One_Swimmer_7039 and @toyshiz on Instagram.
- I saw Optimus Prime Awakening early. No Spoilers but it is incredible - r/transformers, thread read in full September 10, 2026.
- The Transformers: The Movie 40th Anniversary - Fathom Entertainment, release page read September 10, 2026.
- Photographs from the screening: TFW2005, credited there to the four contributors named above. We cannot say which of them took which frame.
[1] Neither attendee said a word about the plot, and neither did anybody in the thread press them to. The film’s own best-known scene has been common knowledge since 1986.
[2] The date tabs on that Fathom page have moved again. When we built the tickets guide the page rendered tabs for September 17 through 23; this morning it renders tabs for September 17 through October 1, alongside the separate 4DX tab, while the descriptive copy on the same page still reads “six days only, September 17-22”, and Hasbro’s July announcement described a run of September 17 to 21. Three different end dates on two companies’ own material. September 17 to 21 is the only span all three agree on; check anything after that against your own cinema before you plan around it.