Michael Bay Talks Transformers 4 – It Takes Place After The Events of The Last Movie

I never thought we’d be getting our news on the next Transformers film from the Huffington Post, but I guess stranger things have happened. They sat down for an interview with the Future Ninja Turtle killer to talk about what brought him back to Transformers and what we can expect to see in the 4th installment when it hits theaters in June of 2014.

First, on why he came back:

“I thought I was done. Then the ride came out [at Universal Studios Hollywood] and the two-and-a-half-hour lines. And then you’re thinking, Oh my God, someone’s going to take this over. And you start doing a lot of soul-searching. Like, OK, I’m about to do a little movie, Pain & Gain … and the studio says they want to restart the franchise. And someone could come in here and screw it up, you know? So I’m thinking that if I do this last one, we set it on a new footing, we change a lot of things — but we keep the history of the three in place. But we broaden it so it can be set up and be carried on — it would have a better chance for survival, I guess. You know?”

We will be nice and not comment on his concern that someone else might “screw it up.”

Sure, some people might just look at this as a money grab, but he had a very interesting rationalization…

“So it was just one of those things. It’s like, when you look what’s going on in the film business with the franchise frenzy right now, why is Cameron doing two more Avatar movies? Why is Peter Jackson doing three more Hobbit movies that are in the same world as Lord of the Rings? When you have a franchise, it’s very hard to give it up.”

Interestingly, what he fails to mention is that Jackson wasn’t going to direct The Hobbit, but he had to step back in after union problems delayed the film to the point that Guillermo Del Toro had to back out. He also failed to mention a big difference between Bay on Transformers and James Cameron on Avatar. That is, despite the fact that Avatar feels like a mash-up of Pocahontas, Fern Gully and Dances With Wolves, it is actually a universe that he created, not a toy and cartoon license that he adapted.

In regards to the next film, and talk of whether it would or would not be a reboot, Bay had this to say:

“No [it’s not a reboot]. We’re basically taking from the history of where it was — or where we left it in Chicago. And we’re going to carry it on from there.”

Source: collider