According to Page Six Hollywood, Michael Bay is in final talks to direct the next "Transformers" movie for David Ellison's newly merged Skydance-Paramount operation. The one remaining sticking point? Bay wants final cut. He'll probably get it.
UPDATE: An additional detail, via Deadline, has Steven Spielberg hired by Ellison to oversee the Transformers franchise as a primary creative producer.
This deal to bring Bay back to the franchise is all about math. Bay's five "Transformers" movies, from the 2007 original through 2017's "The Last Knight," have made a combined $4.38 billion worldwide. That's enough to make anyone, including Ellison, forget every bad review those movies ever got, and believe me, they got plenty.
What's funny is that Bay himself told Rolling Stone before "The Last Knight" that he was done. Burned out, he claimed. He called it "the last one" and said he needed to hand the franchise to someone else. And he did, sort of. Travis Knight made "Bumblebee" (2018), which was somewhat charming, and Steven Caple Jr. made "Rise of the Beasts" (2023), which nobody remembers.
Now Ellison wants the guy who made it all about explosions and a scantily clad Megan Fox back in the chair. Hard to argue with the logic.
Speaking of which, I doubt Fox will be back. If you remember, Bay dropped her from "Dark of the Moon" after she compared him to Hitler in an interview. Meanwhile, Shia LaBeouf seems to be living in an alternate reality these days, so he might not be "available." Mark Wahlberg, maybe?
Bay's last movie was 2022's "Ambulance," starring Jake Gyllenhaal, which underperformed at the box office. He recently exited the Will Smith vehicle "Fast & Loose" after creative clashes with the star, just weeks before production was set to begin.
Bay, who has somehow, in some circles, been reappraised as an "auteur" for his highly distinctive "Bayhem" style of filmmaking, is best known for "Bad Boys," "The Rock," "Armageddon," and "Transformers." His best film, and it's not even close, is the underseen "Pain & Gain," starring a coked-out Dwayne Johnson and a Mark Wahlberg who ends up kidnapping, extorting, and killing people because, as he keeps reminding everyone, he's a "doer."
The studio expects "Michael 2" to reach theaters sometime between late 2027 and early 2028. While Lionsgate has not disclosed a budget for the sequel, the first film cost $200M.