No matter how you feel about the work of director Michael Bay, his box-office success is undeniable — and when it comes to the $4 billion Transformers franchise, it looks like he won’t be abdicating the director’s chair any time soon.
After hinting that 2014’s Transformers: Age of Extinction was the last installment of the series that he’d direct, Bay confirmed this week that he’d helm the still-untitled fifth film in the franchise, scheduled to hit theaters in 2017.
Bay made it official during an interview with Rolling Stone in which he not only announced that he’d direct that film, but also [SPOILER ALERT] revealed that a fan-favorite villain would be making his debut in the upcoming sequel to last year’s live-action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles reboot.
“I’m doing Transformers … 5, is it?” said Bay. “J.J. [Abrams] told me, ‘You’re the only guy that could do this.’ But it’s time to move on. One more.”
The fifth film in the Transformers franchise will feature a script penned by Iron Man screenwriters Art Marcum and Matt Holloway, as well as Black Hawk Down writer Ken Nolan. Mark Wahlberg is expected to reprise his role from Transformers: Age of Extinction.
During the outlet’s interview with Bay, the director also took a video call from visual-effects studio Industrial Light & Magic, which showed him an early rendering of a “crash-landed alien spaceship, then a new dump-truck Transformer with a cloak.” The call also involved some discussion of Krang, a popular villain from the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles animated series that will be making the leap from the cartoon to the live-action movie universe in the upcoming Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows.
“So we’ve eliminated the tentacles,” the ILM supervisor told Bay, concerning Krang. “Is it too monster-ish?”
“He could have some tentacles,” responded Bay, who serves as a producer on the franchise. “I just don’t want them coming out of the side. He looks like a stupid octopus.”
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows is scheduled to hit theaters June 3.
