Battleship (with its rumored $200 million budget) doesn’t open for almost another year (May 2012), and already the other BOARD GAME ADAPTATIONS (I still can’t f*cking believe I’m typing that phrase) are dropping like flies. Three weeks ago, Universal dropped its plan to remake/adapt Clue, and now they’ve dropped the Ouija board movie set to be produced by Michael Bay and directed by McG. Why, it’s almost as if someone at Universal actually heard the words “an Ouija board movie directed by McG.”

The project had been set up at the studio since 2008, when Universal signed a rather aggressive deal with the world’s second-largest toymaker to develop Hasbro and Milton Bradley properties like Candy Land, Stretch Armstrong, Battleship, and Ouija into film titles. Most recently, screenwriter Simon Kinberg (Sherlock Holmes) had taken a pass at the Ouija script under the supervision of McG, who envisioned it as a big-budget Jumanji-like family fantasy, but apparently to no avail.

So strange that they wouldn’t want it. I mean, what better purpose could movies serve than to resurrect dead children’s toys? “This summer, from the mind of M. Night Shyamalan… POGS… in 3D!”

Insiders say that Bay and McG are taking meetings with other studios next week to drum up interest. (Paramount Pictures, with whom producer Bay has an obvious longstanding relationship from directing Hasbro’s Transformers franchise, is said to have passed on taking over the project.)

Assuming it ever does get made (it won’t), I can’t wait for the inevitable Entertainment Weekly cover story about what heroes McG and Michael Bay are for putting aside greed to make the two-hour toy commercial they always believed in.
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Well sonovabitch, file this supercut under “Stuff I Should’ve Made Oliver Edit.” In fact, I’m such a huge fan of the low-angle, camera-rotating-around-the-subject epic shot that’s in every Michael Bay movie that I ended my last fictional Michael Bay post with “(*slow motion bro-high five while low-angle camera spins around them*).” Such is my love of my favorite Michael Bay cliché. But kudos to Screenjunkies for beating us to this supercut. I imagine a few people have tried to talk Michael Bay out of putting this shot in all of his movies, but he probably called them studio flunkies and was literally going to punch them out. Besides, as the great man Michael Bay once said of Michael Bay:

“I don’t change my style for anybody. Pussies do that.”

That should be printed on Michael Bay’s tombstone. I envision it more as a sort of living tombstone, laser branded on the side of a tiger.

This video racked up 1.7 million views while I was on vacation, so there’s a decent chance you’ve already seen it. Those of you who have can humor the rest of us while we catch up. Basically, a sharp-eyed YouTube user named Jermain Odreman found a few shots from The Island that were remarkably similar to shots from Transformers 3. And by remarkably similar, I mean they were the same footage with different CGI added. As you can see above, they’re either the same shot or Bay took great pains to replicate scenes from his least successful movie. People reacted as if this was finally the damning evidence against Michael Bay that we needed. Said one YouTube commenter:

“In the age of advanced CGI, it’s really sad to recycle scenes from movies made 6 years ago.”

Really?  Is it?  I would say advanced CGI made that possible.  And *I* had to watch the clip two or three times before I could determine which parts were actually the same, so I doubt your average Michael Bay fan with a propeller beanie and chocolate all over his face is going to drop his giant lollipop and demand a refund in the middle of the film.  As far as things they did to increase Transformers‘ profit margins, I’d be less worried about re-using a half-second car stunt than about them basically sticking an infomercial for Mercedes in the middle of the movie.  Or how about when they illustrate the leaning office building with a closeup on a the liquid level of a Bushmills bottle (because obviously racks of whiskey bottles are everywhere in an OFFICE BUILDING)?  Get over it. “Using the same shot with different CGI added” is as perfect a metaphor for Michael Bay’s entire career as you’re going to get.

Seriously, College Humor?  It took you 51 seconds to explain every Michael Bay movie? Jeez, this thing dragged more than Transformers 3.  You’re splitting hairs.  Here’s every Michael Bay movie:

In newsier news, Bay says his next film will be Pain and Gain, that $20 million, “Point Break with bodybuilders” movie he was talking about a while back, a “dark comedy” like Fargo.  Now this I can’t wait to see. I recommend bringing a spotter.

Best buds

Transformers 3 opens at midnight tonight, sure to make eleventy kajillion dollars, and with that in mind, there’s been a lot of discussion of its angel-haired mastermind, Michael Bay.  Now, we could sit here all day arguing about whether or not Michael Bay is a “true artist,” but frankly, I don’t think I could get through that without wedgieing everyone. One thing I think we can all agree on, however, is that he’s is an interesting guy, and has hair like a Norse God of myth.  GQ finally published their full oral history that was previously teased, and I’d urge you to check out the whole thing.  But just in case you’d rather stay here and keep making money for daddy, I took the liberty of excerpting some of my favorite bits.  There’s a lot of fun stuff after the jump, but I think you could sum up Michael Bay’s entire career in these top two quotes:

Bruckheimer: Michael even had to write a check for an action sequence that Sony wouldn’t pay for.

Bay: The scene [in Bad Boys] where Martin shoots the guy out of the plane. I said to the line producer, “This is where the audience claps. This is the end of the movie.” He was like, “I don’t care. We’re not doing the shot.” He was just a studio flunky. I was literally going to punch him out.

Peter Devlin (sound mixer, various Bay films): The scene cost $25,000. That’s a lot of money. I believe the studio cashed the check as well.

And:

Bay: I don’t change my style for anybody. Pussies do that.

And with that, I like to imagine a pair of sunglasses magically appeared on his face and the contrails of an F-18 spelled out “DEAL WITH IT” in the sky behind him.

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