Michael Bay Quits As ‘Transformers’ Director, Again

Michael Bay has announced his departure from the Transformers franchise. The blockbuster director has overseen all five installments to the series, but he’s decided to bow out after his work on the upcoming fifth film The Last Knight.

The problem is, it’s impossible to tell if Michael Bay’s decision to quit is actually going to stick or not. That’s because we’ve been here before.

The director even admitted in his official statement announcing his latest departure that he’s quit the franchise after every other Transformers film, too. And once again he’s adamant that The Last Knight will be the final time he directs a Transformers film.

“It’s bittersweet for me. With every Transformers film, I’ve said it would be my last. I see the 120 million fans around the world who see these movies, the huge theme park lines to the ride and the amazing Make- A-Wish kids who visit my sets, and it somehow keeps drawing me back. I love doing these movies. This film was especially fun to shoot. But, this time might really be it. So I’m blowing this one out.”

But, of course, before he can decide to rescind his latest resignation, Michael Bay has to go around the world and promote Transformers: The Last Knight. Rather than just being a sequel, though, The Last Knight is the first film in a proposed Transformers universe that Paramount hopes will soon rival the likes of Marvel and DC.

Michael Bay also took this opportunity to explain how the potential Transformers universe was devised, revealing that they brought together some of Hollywood’s finest writers to iron it out.

“For Transformers: The Last Knight, we put together a writers’ room designed to greatly expand our mythology, integrating our films in a whole new way. Every movie will interlink. It was a huge task to expand mythology from the beginning of the world throughout history.”

But who were these writers? Well, they were spearheaded by Akiva Goldsman, who won an Academy Award for writing A Beautiful Mind and also has a story by credit on The Last Knight. The task of actually writing The Last Knight fell to Art Marcum & Matt Holloway (Iron Man) and Ken Nolan (Black Hawk Down), though.

The writers room was also filled out with Zak Penn (Ready Player One), Lindsey Beer (Barbie), Geneva Robertson-Dworet (Tomb Raider), Christina Hodson (Bumblebee); Steven DeKnight (Daredevil, Smallville), Jeff Pinkner (The Amazing Spider-Man 2, Lost), and Andrew Barrer & Gabriel Ferrari (Ant-Man).

This posse of screenwriters then had several months to work out where the Transformers universe should head; a process that Michael Bay also provided some additional information on.

“Through the summer of 2015, they worked in a huge space on the Paramount lot, surrounded by over 10,000 concept images from the franchise’s history: the movies, cartoons, and comic books. They had a life-size Bumblebee, a Megatron head, and many other props staring them down. We pulled from everything. It was a fan’s dream room. We brought in Transformers historians from Hasbro to educate them on where Transformers has been – so that they could figure out where it can go. I can safely say that there’s never been a Transformers film with the huge visual scope and expansive mythology as this movie, The Last Knight.”

Michael Bay was clearly in a generous mood on Friday.

Because, as well as the above information, he also provide movie fans with a brand new logline for Transformers: The Last Knight that teases what will unfold and what the blockbuster has in store for us when it’s finally released on July 23, 2017.

“The Last Knight shatters the core myths of the Transformers franchise, and redefines what it means to be a hero. Humans and Transformers are at war, Optimus Prime is gone. The key to saving our future lies buried in the secrets of the past, in the hidden history of Transformers on Earth. Saving our world falls upon the shoulders of an unlikely alliance: Cade Yeager (Mark Wahlberg); Bumblebee; an English Lord (Sir Anthony Hopkins); and an Oxford Professor (Laura Haddock). There comes a moment in everyone’s life when we are called upon to make a difference.In Transformers: The Last Knight, the hunted will become heroes. Heroes will become villains. Only one world will survive: theirs, or ours.”

[Featured Image by Getty/Francois Durand]