Despite earlier reports, Michael Bay has NOT officially signed on to direct a fifth ‘Transformers’ flick.  The explosion-meister is responsible for the first four, with Shia LeBeouf in the lead of the first three and Mark Wahlberg in the fourth.  Wahlberg has already confirmed that he is coming back, but for whatever reason, Bay hasn’t yet agreed.

As he tweeted:

Obviously, the hesitation CAN’T stem from worrying about artistic integrity or finding a decent script, since lack thereof hasn’t stopped them from already making four of these.  Clearly Bay is angling for a bigger pay day, since the last installment made over a billion dollars.

The kicker is that the fifth installment won’t just be another sequel, but is the first phase of Paramount’s Transformers Cinematic Universe.  Yeah, that’s a thing.

Earlier this year, Paramount assembled Zak Penn (The Incredible Hulk), Jeff Pinker (Lost), Art Marcum and Matt Holloway (Iron Man), The Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman, Andrew Barrer and Gabriel Ferrari (Ant-Man), Christina Hodson (Shut In), Lindsey Beer, Ken Nolan (Black Hawk Down) , Geneva Robertson-Dworet and Steven S. DeKnight (Daredevil) under the guidance of Akiva Goldsman (Winter’s Tale) to brainstorm ideas not just for a sequel but additional spinoffs in the manner of ‘Star Wars’ and Marvel’s shared universes.  

The ideas these writers came up with were sifted through by Bay, Spielberg, Paramount and Hasbro’s Brian Goldner and producers Lorenzo di Bonaventura, Mark Vahradian and Don Murphy who determined which ideas could work for stand-alone movies.  The seeds for these potential new movies will be planted in ‘Transformers 5’.  

This is no guarantee, of course.  ‘The Amazing Spider-Man 2’ included a post-credits scene that set up ‘Sinister Six’ which would build on Sony’s ‘Spider-Man’ franchise, only to see Sony scrap this burgeoning Universe and start over from scratch working more closely with Marvel on future films.

But for whatever reason, despite critics and audiences alike panning these movies from the start, they keep raking in ungodly amounts of money.  It’s hard to fault Paramount for making more and more and it’s also hard to fault Bay for trying to slice off the largest piece of pie he can.

Honestly, does it even matter what the script is or who directs it?

Do you hope that Bay and Paramount can come to an agreement to allow the director to continue guiding the adventures of the Autobots?  What would you like to see in potential spinoffs?

Source: Collider