Michael Bay

Previously reported with the title of 13 Hours or 13 Hours in Benghazi, Michael Bay’s upcoming military drama now has an official — and much more wordy — title. 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi, or you can just keep calling it Bayghazi for short. The film also has an official release date so you can begin counting the days until you get to see a new Michael Bay movie that doesn’t involve Transformers (or so we think).

Not long after Transformers: Age of Extinction hit theaters last year, director Michael Bay revealed that he wasn’t planning on directing another installment in the franchise. Instead, he’d pass that honor down to someone else. Since then, we’ve heard rumors that Bay may have changed his mind, as he’s prone to do, and he’ll likely return to direct Transformers 5. One person who is returning for the fifth film is Mark Wahlberg, and he seems to have just confirmed those rumors.

With Michael Bay behind both the Transformers franchise and the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movies, you would think he’d be mighty tempted to orchestrate some sort of crossover. And you would be right — sort of. A fan spotted a pretty neat little Transformers cameo (okay, more like an easter egg) on the set of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2, which should make Bay’s Baes (that’s what I’m going to call Michael Bay fans from now on) pretty happy.

As the new creative director/writers room head for the Transformers franchise, producer Akiva Goldsman’s job is to collect a group of talented and diverse writers and oversee future projects for the franchise, including sequels and spinoffs. Goldsman has just added two more writers to his room, which is apparently now fully-staffed and ready to roll out their mission. But…what is that mission, exactly? Goldsman was kind enough to share.

In what is surely the oddest coupling of the day, Leonardo DiCaprio and Michael Bay are joining production forces to make a movie about the Rwandan bicycling team. No, you will not be seeing Leonardo DiCaprio appear in a Michael Bay film (sadly), but you can daydream about their friendship and imagine that out there, somewhere, DiCaprio and Bay are riding on a bicycle built for two.

Although he’s currently heading into production on his Benghazi drama 13 Hours, Michael Bay is already lining up his next directing project: the sci-fi film Time Salvager, based on the novel by Wesley Chu. The project sees Bay once again teaming up with Paramount, the studio behind the director’s Transformers franchise, which Bay also produces.

If you didn’t like Michael Bay’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie, just know that it could’ve been a lot worse. An early draft of the script turned the Turtles into aliens from another dimension and Shredder was turned into Colonel Schroeder, a secret alien who can grow blades. That’s just one of the facts packed into the latest episode of You Think You Know Movies, which gets totally tubular with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles!

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 is heading into production with director David Green (Earth to Echo), with Michael Bay once again producing. The sequel is bringing along a few familiar faces, as well as new ones, like classic villains Bebop and Rocksteady, and while it will be some time before we get a peek at those guys, Bay has dropped the first photos from the set of the upcoming sequel, featuring some vibrant new vehicles.

Last month, we reported on Paramount’s plans to continue their Transformers franchise, following Michael Bay’s decision to exit the director’s chair to focus on non-robot projects (we’ll see). According to reports, the studio plans on not only releasing another sequel, but expanding the universe with spinoffs, hiring Akiva Goldsman to oversee a creative team of writers. Hasbro has now confirmed those plans, along with the intention to release a new Transformers movie in 2017.

Since Michael Bay decided to make Transformers: Age of Extinction his last directorial outing with the franchise, it’s been unclear just where the series is heading. We’d heard talk of Mark Wahlberg returning to continue the storyline that began with last summer’s film, but little else since then. Taking a cue from Disney’s Star Wars plans (along with every other major studio’s “expanded universe” attempts), Paramount has hired Akiva Goldsman to create a “writers room” and brainstorm new sequel and spinoff ideas.