Michael Bay – Will Explode For Money

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Well, who’d have thunk it? Michael Bay is leading the masses in trying to bring moderately budgeted studio movies back, as reported by Deadline.

Bay, who is known for his movies of excess (Transformers, Bad Boys, etc) is using his Platinum Dunes studios to get some “low” ($30 million and under) action and thriller films produced.

With dwindling ticket prices, studios recently have been more and more reliant on “tentpole” filmmaking (essentially, putting the studio’s entire budget behind a few gigantic films that will have to perform astronomically). And Bay, with his bloated Transformers films has been the poster child for this movement. Paramount has just bought Platinum Dunes’ The Rising, a “techno-thriller” from the mind of Soo Hugh (television writer for The Killing, The River). No telling so far what this one’s about, but Paramount is very excited, as it’s gonna be pretty cheap for them – “Yay! More coke!” probably says an executive producer somewhere.

And Bay himself has decided to make the lower-budgeted Pain and Gain next, a $25 million movie about bodybuilders going on a crime spree, starring Mark Wahlberg and Dwayne Johnson… and that, shit, that actually sounds awesome. I am excited about a Michael Bay film for the first time I’m aware of.

Of course, after he’s done with that, he’ll move on to Transformers 4, which was pitched by the studio as “more of the same shit” presumably, which is said to have a lower budget than earlier instalments. But hey – how much money do explosions, blue & gold filters and slow motion cost anyway? Not a whole lot – because art is cheap, and shit.

Likely the first thing that will be sacrificed will be the script-making department, because fuck those guys. Anyone can write an explosion: BOOM! KA-FROOM!

Yes, Mr. Bay, I am available to write for your next films. And yes, I am cheap. So very cheap.