This is fast becoming a Michael Bay blog, but oh well.  The latest news is that he and Spielberg will produce an adaptation of I Am Number Four, the first of a soon-to-be-released series of young-adult sci-fi novels… co-written by Million Little Pieces guy James Frey.  Frey was the memoir fabricator who Oprah made famous then tried to bring down so that she wouldn’t look bad, only to later apologize (she gets a little crabby before her first hoagie).  Anyway, here’s the story:

“The story is about a group of nine children from a planet called Lorien who have been attacked by a hostile race from another planet. The nine and their guardians evacuate to earth, where three are killed. The protagonist, a Lorien boy named John Smith, hides in Paradise, Ohio, as a human and tries to evade his predators.” [Variety]

I was able to dig up a little more information about the project.  It’s actually about teenagers, which, as I argued to the judge, are not children.

The protagonist is 15.  The rival race of aliens are from the planet Mogadore.  They destroyed Lorien in order to strip the planet of its natural resources because Mogadore was dying, and still is, and they followed the Loric to Earth to finish the job.   The Loric develop their “Legacies” (special powers) around their fifteenth year. This first book is a kind of love story.  At its core it’s a type of father/son alone in the world, always moving to stay alive story, a lá The Road.

Lucky bastards.  I didn’t develop my “legacies” until around my 17th year, and by then I was already known as the guy who wore boxers in the shower.  Anyway, this story is pretty weird.  I’m assuming Bay and Spielberg are only collaborating with James Frey because they thought A Million Little Pieces was about explosions.