Michael Bay Back For Transformers ‘Reboot’

The 2012 Toy Fair might not seem the most likely wellspring of blockbuster news, but that is precisely what it has proved to be in the last few days, as first an Avengers board game appeared to reveal the movie’s villains, and now Michael Bay has been confirmed as directing his fourth Transformers movie, set to hit cinemas in summer of 2014.

Lorenzo Di Bonaventura, the producer behind the Transformers franchise, was the man who spilled the beans about Bay coming back to play with Optimus Prime and co. for at least one more time. Said Di Bonaventura…

Michael’s going to direct and it’ll be summer 2014… I think the challenge here is that we are really going to do a reboot and what that’s going to be, we don’t even know yet.

What that surely means is Shia LaBeouf is extremely unlikely to be back as Sam Witwicky (as the actor himself admitted during his press chores for the third Transformers movie), and that a new human playmate for the Autobots will be sought. However Di Bonaventura poured cold water on the rumours that angry-muscle-masquerading-as-functioning-human Jason Statham might replace LaBeouf.

No, it’s so silly. We have to get a story first. You can’t pick characters if you don’t have a story.

With Transformers IV (or Trans4mers as some wags have already christened it) still two-and-a-bit years away, you could forgive Bay for taking a break from directing (his army of detractors would likely thank him for it). But he is apparently determined to cram in another movie in the meantime, in the brawny shape of Pain and Gain, a true story-based tale of ‘roiders-turned-kidnappers which Other Guys alumni Mark Wahlberg and Dwayne Johnson have been linked to.