'Transformers' Spinoff 'Bumblebee' Casts Jorge Lendeborg Jr. as Male Lead (Exclusive)

Rising star Jorge Lendeborg Jr. is in talks for another big project: He'll play the young male lead in Paramount's Transformers spinoff Bumblebee.

Hailee Steinfeld also will star in the film which Travis Knight, who directed the stop-motion movie Kubo and the Two Strings, is helming.

Bumblebee is the yellow and black striped Autobot that appears as one of the main characters in the Transformers film series. Plot details have not been released, but Steinfeld will play a tomboy who also holds a job as a mechanic after school. Sources say the tale is a prequel to the main film series, focused on Bumblebee's life in an earlier decade. Christina Hodson (Shut In) wrote the script.

The movie project is the first spinoff in what the studio hopes will be a Transformers Cinematic Universe that will include prequels and offshoots from a line of movies that have generated more than $3.7 billion worldwide. The most recent film, Transformers: The Last Knight, hit theaters June 23, and has earned $495.7 million worldwide so far.

Bumblebee is slated for a June 8, 2018, release.

Lendeborg Jr. is a rising star, recently nabbing roles on several notable projects. He can currently be seen in Sony and Marvel's hit Spider-Man: Homecoming with Tom Holland. The actor, who made his feature debut starring in The Land, he also has booked roles in Robert Rodriguez's Alita: Battle Angel and upcoming YA project Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda at Fox 2000.

He is repped by Mosaic, Momentum Talent Agency and Dan Fox and Steve Warren at Hansen Jacobson.