• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Michael Bay Announces Departure from the 'Transformers' Franchise

Status
Not open for further replies.
http://www.michaelbay.com/2017/02/02/only-one-world-will-survive-theirs-or-ours/

I’ve been living in this franchise for over 10 years now. 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. We had a great team of writers: Akiva Goldsman (A Beautiful Mind); Art Marcum & Matt Holloway (Iron Man); Ken Nolan (Black Hawk Down); 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).

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.

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.

It’s a final chapter and a new beginning. Here’s the writers’ log line:

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.

He means it this time, he swears.

Not sure if anyone can deviate the franchise from what it has become, but it'll be interesting to see someone else take the reigns.
 

Toa TAK

Banned
Man, this is kind of a weird feeling if he sticks to his guns and actually leaves. Movies aren't great but I've enjoyed his mark on the franchise nonetheless.

Transformers had writers?

Not good ones. Especially Kurtzman and Orci on the first two.
 

TAJ

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
I thought the previous movies already redefined what it was to be a hero by having a protagonist who was a psychopath.
 

Grizzlyjin

Supersonic, idiotic, disconnecting, not respecting, who would really ever wanna go and top that
I nearly chocked reading that these movies have a writers room. Jeez.
 

Maxim726X

Member
17814064.gif


Good fucking riddance.
 
In before duckroll posts here saying that Villeneuve should take over the franchise.

That the franchise got someone of Michael Bay's stature is shocking in and of itself. It could have easily fallen into the lap of a Rob Cohen or a Stephen Sommers. Villeneuve is way above this material.
 

MattKeil

BIGTIME TV MOGUL #2
"This time might really be it."

You can't even get your final goodbyes right, Michael

Yeah I'm going to need something a little more concrete before I pop the champagne on this one.

I will give him pretty good odds of finally leaving now, though. He may not be as interested now that they have to be yearly and thus he won't be directing everything. He’s going to miss one with next year’s Bumblebee solo movie and then they start getting into the Hasbro Cinematic Universe stuff so if he enjoys being the sole captain of the USS Shitty Robot Movie then this is the time to abandon ship.
 

-Plasma Reus-

Service guarantees member status
"i need some publicity for this movie. So let me say some bullshit so you watch talk about this movie right before its released"
 

Sesha

Member
I-dont-believe-you.gif


Just like Kojima with MGS he will feel the need to direct the next film, or Paramount will throw money at him to get him to stay.
 

Shoeless

Member
If he really is producing this Little America movie, it may be the first Michael Bay movie I buy on BD.

Written by British film-maker Rowan Athale, who will also direct, it's set in a grim future where the president has bankrupted the US and many Americans have been forced to emigrate to China to find employment after the country calls in US debts. A Chinese billionaire hires a former American Force Recon member to find his lost daughter.
 

Joe T.

Member
These movies are on an annual release schedule right now, so if he isn't coming back I imagine they'll be announcing whoever's directing the Bumblebee spinoff soon.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top Bottom