For a guy who once said “I don’t change my style for anyone. Pussies do that.” Michael Bay sure seems to get hurt little feelings any time one of his actors points out that Transformers has all the cultural value of those Olestra chips that made your asshole leak. Or as we in the business call it, “acknowledging the obvious.” Most recently, it was Hugo Weaving, who provided the voice of Megatron, who said, when asked by Collider if he’d been contacted by Michael Bay about the next Transformers movie:

“No.  That’s a weird job for me because it honestly was a two-hour voice job, initially.  I was doing a play and I actually didn’t have time, anyway.  It was one of the only things I’ve ever done where I had no knowledge of it, I didn’t care about it, I didn’t think about it.  They wanted me to do it.  In one way, I regret that bit.  I don’t regret doing it, but I very rarely do something if it’s meaningless.  It was meaningless to me, honestly.  I don’t mean that in any nasty way.  I did it.  It was a two-hour voice job, while I was doing other things.  Of course, it’s a massive film that’s made masses of money.  I just happened to be the voice of one of the iconic villainous characters.  But, my link to that and to Michael Bay is so minimal.  I have never met him.  I was never on set.  I’ve seen his face on Skype.  I know nothing about him, really.  I just went in and did it.  I never read the script.  I just have my lines, and I don’t know what they mean.  That sounds absolutely pathetic!  I’ve never done anything like that, in my life.  It’s hard to say any more about it than that, really.”

Pretty diplomatic, really. He felt bad taking a big paycheck to do a movie he didn’t care much about. He still took it, but it’s not like he said Michael Bay was a black-market organ farmer or anything, he was mostly being self-deprecating. Of course, Michael Bay didn’t see it that way, lashing out at unnamed h8ers on his personal website, like a baller do:

Do you ever get sick of actors that make $15 million a picture, or even $200,000 for voiceover work that took a brisk one hour and 43 minutes to complete, and then complain about their jobs? With all the problems facing our world today, do these grumbling thespians really think people reading the news actually care about trivial complaints that their job wasn’t “artistic enough” or “fulfilling enough”? I guess The Hollywood Reporter thinks so.

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"No, no, this ass lighting is all wrong. God is such an amatuer."

Good news day on FilmDrunk continues, as a day that’s already seen us report a Grown Ups sequel and a Three Stooges trailer now can add the prospect of a fourth Transformers movie. And probably with Michael Bay on again to direct, because it’s not just anyone that can film indistinguishable flaming balls of shit flying at each other.

Michael Bay is in final negotiations to direct a new Transformers film, insiders tell Vulture. In recent days, Bay has been assembling a cast for a long-gestating project that even predates Bay’s entry into planet-destroying, Pain and Gain, based on a three-part New Times story about the infamous “Sun Gym gang,” a group of dimwitted Miami bodybuilders who kidnapped, tortured, and robbed a Florida businessman but got their comeuppance when their left-for-dead victim hired a private eye to hunt them down [formerly described as "Point Break with bodybuilders." -Ed]. Insiders tell Vulture that Bay has been seeking to adapt the sordid revenge tale almost since its publication in 1999, and that it’s proving the major blandishment in getting Bay to commit to launching a new Transformers cycle. “Without Pain, there’s no tit for tat,” explains one person familiar with the talks, “That’s Paramount’s leverage.”

I assume Michael Bay has the tats, because I can’t imagine him trading tits for anything. Basically, the plan would be for Bay to shoot the bodybuilder movie first and Transformers 4 immediately after.

Another insider familiar with the situation cautioned that while Paramount “does not have a closed deal” with Bay, the studio “is not far from closing” on one, either, and that an announcement could come as early as next week. Meanwhile, the details of the next cyborg saga [THEY'RE NOT CYBORGS! *takes puff on inhaler*] are being kept secret, but we’re told that it is definitely not a prequel, and that it will delve deeper into the Transformers canon to mine older characters and lore.

The most important question on Shia Labeouf’s mind: WHERE’S BUMBLEBEE NOW?

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I don’t know what to make of this Variety article, because it says “nothing is set in stone,” and some of the facty statements are prefaced by awesomely unattributable phrases like “it’s said,” but it seems to suggest that Paramount might shoot Transformers 4 and 5 back-to-back. No matter who said it, the fact that anyone might want to do that seems newsworthy in itself. Try to figure this out with me.

Hasbro chief Brian Goldner said during a Monday third-quarter earnings call that the toymaker is in “active discussions” with Paramount, Michael Bay and Steven Spielberg on how to move forward. Sources close to the planning process tell Variety two films could be headed into production.

Yes, an exec at a toy company is active in pre-production discussions for a film. Sad as that is, it’s even sadder that none of us are surprised.

Paramount is considering lensing its fourth and fifth films without pause. Nothing is set in stone, but screenwriter Ehren Kruger is said to have an idea for the next installments that the studio is high on, and has only begun engaging with writers.

And he wrote the second and third ones, so I’m sure this will be just as great.

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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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There’s a new clip from Transformers: Dark of the Moon out (opening July 1st), and it seems as if Michael Bay is finally giving the fans what we’ve long been clamoring for: MORE JOSH DUHAMEL. It’s like someone found a way to bottle pure charisma, and gave it a spiky haircut.  In the clip, Mr. Fergie addresses his troops on the eve of Earth’s destruction, giving the kind of pump-up speech I can only describe as if Bill Pullman in Independence Day had sex with a genetic hybrid of Gene Hackman in Hoosiers and George C. Scott’s Patton, and gave birth to a child that was weaned on milk from Michael Bay’s leopards and only allowed to watch Armageddon.

“Alright, LISTEN UP.  You wanna hit back? We’re gonna have wingsuit in.  It’s the only way to get close.”

We already tried Parkour, BASE jumping, sky surfing, rappelling, kite surfing, boogie boarding, street luging, snowmobiling, snowboarding, wakeboarding, four-wheeling, and mini-bikes, and TRUST ME, THESE GOVERNMENT-ISSUE NEOPRENE FLYING SQUIRREL SUITS ARE THE ONLY WAY!  NOW DROP YOUR C*CKS AND GRAB YOUR SOCKS, MARINES, TONIGHT’S GONNA BE A GOOD NIGHT, OOH RAH-AH AH-AH!

DUHAMEL: “I can’t promise anyone a ride home, but if you’re with me… the world needs ya now.”

TOUGH BLACK SOLDIER: “I’ll find my own ride, sir!”

DUHAMEL: “WHO ELSE?”

EVERYONE: “OVER HERE, SIR!”

DUHAMEL: “THEN HERE WE GO!”

EVERYONE GRAB A RED BULL! MOVE! MOVE! MOVE! WE’LL SHOW THESE GODDAMNED GENERAL MOTORS ROBOTS WHAT XTREME MARINES CAN DO, MAZEL TOV!

I always “wingsuit in” to the bedroom.