Michael Bay Prone to Hyperbole
Michael Bay, the director responsible for TRANSFORMERS, PEARL HARBOR, ARMAGEDDON, BAD BOYS and an unfortunate cameo in MYSTERY MEN, almost destroyed Paramount Pictures today. Okay, perhaps I’m exaggerating. You’ll never get that kind of behavior from the BBC:
Director Michael Bay briefly threatened to pull out of a sequel to Transformers after Paramount Pictures dropped the next generation Blu-ray DVD format. “No Transformers 2 for me!” wrote the director on his personal website. “To deny people who have Blu-ray sucks!”
Personally, I would edit that comment to simply read “…Blu-ray sucks!” but that’s not really fair, because Blu-ray is just fine. On the other hand, my version is funnier.
Bay later replaced his intemperate comments with an “I overreacted,” perhaps because he learned that there is a Spielberg loophole - THOSE movies will be released on both formats. Spielberg produced TRANSFORMERS. Or perhaps the HD-DVD people threw a little money his way as well. Did I just say that out loud? Sorry.
-daniel k
August 24th, 2007 at 3:46 am
Hyperbole from Bay, huh? Non-headline if I ever saw one. Can you imagine a typical day at the Bay household? All the super-loud appliances and exploding stuff and flapping American flags.
Bay may have had a cow about Blu-Ray for just that reason: he has a player in every room in his house. It also might be a cinematic purist rant: Blu-Ray discs have larger storage capacity than HD-DVD, and he wants every pixel of CG mayhem reproduced faithfully.
What’s more momentous is Paramount’s decision to back HD-DVD. It could likely be a spate of inscrutable corporate machinations which caused this change of heart. Then again, it could be a bottom-line decision: HD-DVDs are cheaper to author and manufacture than the competing format and yield roughly similar results. We may never know.