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Thursday, October 8
Director Michael Bay is currently Paramount Pictures' golden boy, thanks to the incredible success of his Transformers movies. However, the filmmaker known for his over-the-top productions also runs Platinum Dunes, a production company responsible for reinventing and repackaging a number of classic horror movies where the key words are "low budget" — and Paramount wants in on the action.
Variety reports that Bay's Platinum Dunes has signed a first-look production deal with Paramount Pictures' president, Adam Goodman. Platinum Dunes is responsible for the recent return of several big-name horror franchises to the box office, including The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Friday the 13th, The Amityville Horror, and the upcoming A Nightmare on Elm Street, all of which were made on comparatively modest budgets. Surprising no one, Goldman said that he's a fan of the company because they make money:
What makes us so excited to have Platinum Dunes here at Paramount is how ... they have consistently created excitingly commercial movies that have proven to be a formidable force at the box office.
Bay said that he is looking forward to taking a break from Transformers to work on some smaller-scale pictures:
I found myself tossing and turning, and realized there was a reason I originally wanted to push [Transformers 3] until 2012, and do a small movie in between. This is hard, and I'm getting too old for this pressure.
What that means for Bay, though, who can guess? Something tells us his "small movie" will still get a budget north of $100 million.
Posted 10/8/2009 by BrentJS
Related: Michael Bay | Transformers | Friday the 13th | Adam Goodman | Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen | Transformers 3 | A Nightmare on Elm Street
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Wednesday, October 7
There will be no Transformers in the future for Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, the the writing team behind both Transformers films. The news was dropped on producer Don Murphy's website yesterday when a forum poster asked Orci if it was true that the writing duo would not return for another round of Transformers. Orci responded simply, "It's true."
Orci said that writer Ehren Kruger, who assisted with the script for Revenge of the Fallen, would be handling writing duties on the sequel. When asked if Kruger knew enough about Transformers to handle the writing duties alone, Orci commented:
He does. He really did his homework. He's awesome.
Orci also addressed the humor in Revenge of the Fallen. A forum poster commented that some parents didn't even want to take their kids to see the film because of the humor and Orci responded:
I can’t blame them.
Director Michael Bay recently confirmed thatplans were in motion for a third Transformers movie and that he and actress Megan Fox would be returning.
Next Showing: Transformers 3 is scheduled for release July 1, 2011
Posted 10/7/2009 by BrentJS
Related: Ehren Kruger | Roberto Orci | Alex Kurtzman | Transformers | Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen | Transformers 3
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Monday, July 27
Actress Megan Fox scoffed when reporters asked her about the possibility of playing a superhero in a live-action Wonder Woman movie, but apparently playing a zombie wasn't beneath her consideration. Perhaps that's because she found the role to be so unlike the decidedly un-sexy zombies to appear on screen in previous movies.
In the still-in-production comedy-horror movie Jennifer's Body, Fox plays a cheerleader who returns from the dead as a zombie to feast on her former classmates. In a recent interview, Fox said that zombies can be "sexy" and that there was a lot of eroticism in the movie:
Fox was criticized for being so critical of Transformers, the franchise that made her famous. She contrasts her new movie with Transformers, saying that she has more opportunities to act in Jennifer's Body:
There are no robots to distract you from whatever performance I give, so if it's terrible you will know. But the character was so much fun. I felt I was being able to make fun of my own image.
Jennifer's Body is currently in production, with Karyn Kusama (Æon Flux) directing from a script by Diablo Cody (Juno). If a zombie revenge movie seems a strange thing for the indie darling to write after the heartfelt tale of Juno MacGuff, think again. Cody told Entertainment Weekly:
I was involved in a typical adolescent love triangle, and I found myself having incredibly violent thoughts about this other girl.
Posted 7/27/2009 by BrentJS
Related: Megan Fox | Karyn Kusama | Aeon Flux | Transformers | Juno | Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen | Jennifer's Body | Diablo Cody
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Friday, July 24
With the massive success of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, a sequel was certain to follow. Director Michael Bay, who worked on the Transformers movies back-to-back, has already said he wants to do a different movie before he does another tour in the robotic world. But would a Transformers 3 get made without Bay? Transformers producer Lorenzo Di Bonaventura explained to IGN that a Bay-less sequel is possible:
As the producer I'd certainly love to see him back. I can't imagine Transformers without him. I guess the studio will see it sometime as such a big asset that they are forced to do it, but Michael has never intimated anything like that — the timing is the big question for him, not whether he is going to do it or not.
So it's less about Bay wanting to do another Transformers and more about whether Paramount wants to wait for him to be ready. Speaking of Transformers 3, isn't it time to bring out Unicron, the planet-morphing robot from the animated Transformers: The Movie?
Unicron worries me because it's so big that it dwarves emotion. It's so hard, because when you're working to that scale, it sort of becomes outside any kind of human reality you have. It's obviously a great character, and one that we're definitely going to talk about, but for me personally — and I'm not the only vote here — that one scares me. Because of its size, it becomes sort of impersonal when it gets to that scale.
I remember seeing the second Fantastic Four and Galactcus, and suddenly I was in another world and it took it away from the human characters. One of the tricky parts about Transformers is you've got these five-to-six foot things called humans, then you've got the 32-foot Transformers, then you come to Devastator and you've got 125-feet. You become increasingly small on a physical level, and I think that's true on a story level. I think if you go to Unicron, you're going to end up sacrificing your human characters. And for me that worries me because I like the human characters.
But isn't a giant robot planet perfect for the IMAX experience?:
Well, Devastator covered it from foot to top so I don't know what the hell else you'd do to tell you the truth. Don't get me wrong — Unicron is an obvious and great character, I just worry about it from the experience of the movie.
No matter if Unicron makes into Transformers 3, his voice won't, since alas, Orson Welles won't be available. So what would Di Bonaventura like to explore in the sequel?
I love the Mini-Cons actually — I think they're very cool.
Mini-Cons? The human-sized Transformers? Hmm, Transformers 3: Attack of the Mini-Cons lacks a little punch, but their history in the cartoon series Transformers: Armada is tied to Unicron, so maybe it's not such a bad idea after all.
Posted 7/24/2009 by Ryan
Related: Transformers: The Movie | Lorenzo di Bonaventura | Michael Bay | Transformers | Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen | Transformers 3
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Monday, July 20
The above headline is true ... in China.
China Film spokesman Weng Li recently announced that director Michael Bay's Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is the new all-time Chinese box-office champion, soundly defeating James Cameron's Titanic. The first Transformers movie didn't come close to Titanic's $52.7 million record, with ticket sales of only $37 million. But its sequel earned $58.5 million, making it the new leader by a wide margin.
To protect locally produced films, China has a quota system in place that limits the number of foreign-film releases to approximately 20 per year. Despite this, Hollywood films have already had a successful run in China, with Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian and Terminator Salvation already topping the $15 million mark this year — the Chinese equivalent of "blockbuster" status. China currently has approximately 4,100 screens, and Transformers: ROTF received a wide release because of the absence of any major motion picture competition.
According to BoxOfficeMojo.com, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen has earned $364 million domestically, with an additional $383 million earned internationally. This pales in comparison to the overall ticket sales for Titanic, which earned $600 million domestically and $1.2 billion internationally.
Posted 7/20/2009 by BrentJS
Related: James Cameron | Titanic | Michael Bay | Transformers | Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
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Friday, July 10
Despite saying in a recent article that he wanted to slow down the pace somewhat and do a more actor-driven movie after Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, director Michael Bay may have already signed up for another round of science fiction/action.
DreamWorks is apparently finalizing a deal to acquire the screen rights to I Am Number Four, the first in a proposed series of six science fiction books by James Frey, the best-selling author who admitted on Ophrah that he had embellished parts of his addiction memoir A Million Little Pieces. The publishing rights to the series, about a group of alien teenagers who find refuge on earth after their own planet is destroyed, was supposedly involved in a bidding war, with Bay taking the series to DreamWorks for consideration.
Though nothing's been finalized at this point, Bay added the article to his own blog page, so it seems likely that he will be on board — at least in some capacity.
Posted 7/10/2009 by BrentJS
Related: Michael Bay | Transformers | Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
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Wednesday, July 8
There's been a lot of talk recently about some verbal feuding between Transformers star Megan Fox and Michael Bay. Fox recently dissed the 44-year-old pyromaniacal director by saying that working with him was not an actor's experience. Bay responded by saying that Fox had a lot of growing up to do.
But it appears that there is something to Fox's indication that Bay treats his actors as props — and she can apparently speak from personal experience. Several sources, including The San Francisco Chronicle, The London Free Press, and The National Ledger are making quite a fuss over the following quote from British writer Jason Solomons, published in this article for The Observer:
[Fox] told me she went to director Michael Bay's house to audition and he made her wash his Ferrari while he filmed her. She said she didn't know what had happened to that footage. When I put it to Bay himself, he looked suitably abashed. "Er, I don't know where it is either."
In Bay's defense, maybe he just really wanted a free car wash and knew an opportunity when he saw one.
Posted 7/8/2009 by Rich Z
Related: Megan Fox | Michael Bay | Transformers | Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
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Monday, June 29
Despite the many trials and tribulations leading up to the release of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen – from star Shia LaBeouf's life-threatening injuries on and off the set during production to leaked emails from director Michael Bay to studio execs attacking their lack of marketing – the sequel to 2007's Transformers grossed an estimated $201 million in its first five days at the box office, the second best five-day opener ever after The Dark Knight. During the 3-day weekend alone the movie grossed an estimated $112 million.
According to Box Office Mojo, those numbers make Transformers: ROTF the movie with the largest June opening and the highest-grossing non-holiday, non-Friday opening period. By comparison, the first Transformers movie grossed $70.5 million in its 3-day opener and took 12 days to reach the $200 million mark.
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen was also the highest grossing IMAX movie ever, opening to the tune of $11.7 million over the 3-day period ($14.4 million over 5 days), eclipsing the 3-day IMAX opening of Star Trek.
Posted 6/29/2009 by BrentJS
Related: Michael Bay | Transformers | Star Trek | Shia LaBeouf
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Thursday, June 25
Since Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen opened yesterday, you might have been wondering what its star Shia LaBeouf's favorite movie is. Luckily for you, Reelz Channel has the answer in the new weekly series My Favorite Movie, where we go straight to the source and find out what Hollywood's best and brightest is really into. In fact, it turns out that despite his proclivity for big-budget blockbusters, LaBeouf's personal taste actually runs to more intimate fare.
Check back every Thursday, or on Reelz Channel television, for more of My Favorite Movie.
Posted 6/25/2009 by reelz
Related: Transformers: The Movie | Transformers | Transformers: The IMAX Experience | Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen | Shia LaBeouf
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Tuesday, June 23
Opening a week ahead of its U.S. release date — and despite the recent news that director Michael Bay was very unhappy with Paramount for not marketing the film strong enough — Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen has opened at the number one spot internationally, with $14.1 million in the U.K. and $5.8 million in Japan. According to Paramount, the sequel to 2007's Transformers defeated the original's opening in the U.K. by 71% and in Japan by 13%.
Terminator Salvation, the franchise relaunch starring Christian Bale, formerly the number one film internationally, dropped down to second place, with box-office receipts totaling $18.4 million. The third place film, The Hangover, raked in $11.7 million, while the fourth- and fifth-place films, Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian and The Proposal, earned $10.4 million and $10 million, respectively.
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen stars Shia LaBeouf, Megan Fox, John Turturro, Rainn Wilson, and Josh Duhamel.
Posted 6/23/2009 by BrentJS
Related: Megan Fox | Michael Bay | Transformers | Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen | Shia LaBeouf