Michael Bay responds to Paramount's abandonment of Blu-ray: "No Transformers 2 for me!"

So by now you've heard that Paramount has dropped support for Blu-ray right? Good, so has a notable Hollywood director. Michael Bay -- the man behind "Transformers," "Bad Boys," "Pear Harbor," etc. -- just threw down with Paramount in his personal blog. In a forum post titled "Paramount pisses me off!", he states, "I want people to see my movies in the best formats possible. For them to deny people who have Blu-ray sucks! They were progressive by having two formats. No Transformers 2 for me!" That's right Mike, aim your PS3 right at their coffers!

Update: Ha, so much for standing up to the boss-man. Michael's latest post now says that, "I drank the Kool Aid" blah blah blah "so I think I might be back on to do Transformers 2!" Whatever, wuss.

[Thanks, Pilam69 and Carl G.]

[matthew @ Aug 21st 2007 6:10AM]

one less michael bay movie?

i can feel myself becoming an HD-DVD fanboy already

[emehrkay @ Aug 21st 2007 8:25AM]

QFT!!!

I am surprised that people actually liked the transformers movie

[Ang @ Aug 21st 2007 8:31AM]

Matthew, it's ignorant comments like yours that really piss me off. Why don't you do the world a favour, go back and crawl under your slimy green stone. Michael Bay Movies Rock.

[patsy @ Aug 21st 2007 8:39AM]

@Ang:

I second matthew's feelings on the matter.

[Ang @ Aug 21st 2007 9:04AM]

I happen to be a Michael Bay Fan. Yes I like his style of direction:

Transformers (Exec Producer/Director)
The Island (Producer/Director)
Pearl Harbor (Producer/Director)
Armageddon (Producer/Director)
Bad Boys, Bad Boys II (Director)
The Rock (Director).

Also these movies did quite well at box office.

And is currently working on a another Cool Movie - 2012: the War for Souls.

[Alan Strangis @ Aug 21st 2007 9:19AM]

I second matthew's opinion.

I don't care about the format wars, but any move that prevents Michael Bay from helming a pic is a blessing in my book.

[Patrick @ Aug 21st 2007 9:38AM]

Michael Bay sucks? Interesting that Spielberg would support him. But then again, perhaps Spielberg sucks as well. Michael Bay has pushed fx integration into films in brilliant ways, and he can tell a story at that. Most people mistakingly believe the popular opinion that his movies are nothing more than fx driven spectacles-wrong. Until we've been responsible for a multi-million dollar budget and have a delivered a product that makes money as well as pushes a film's element's envelope artisitcally, I don't think we can criticize Bay.

Besides, as in all first movie franchises, TF had to introduce characters and build a believable reality, the second movie would have been free to spin a good yarn without the shackles of exposition.

[DavidH @ Aug 21st 2007 9:57AM]

>one less michael bay movie?
>i can feel myself becoming an HD-DVD fanboy already

Is your point that MB movies are bad? Because then you'd be a Blu-Ray fan. HD-DVD has the film, Blu-Ray doesn't. That's why he's cross. He wants both to have it.

(Not that I blame you though, this article sucks. "Paramount has dropped support for Blu-ray... so has a notable Hollywood director."
"For them to deny people who have Blu-ray sucks!" So has he dropped blu-ray support or does he want it Engadget? -10 for clarity.)

[Tim @ Aug 21st 2007 10:01AM]

Not only one less Michael Bay movie...
but also a chance that someone else will make a decent Transformers movie.

[mfed3 @ Aug 21st 2007 1:50PM]

thank you, michael bay sucks

[John @ Aug 21st 2007 10:11AM]

I'm pretty OK with the guy who directed Pearl Harbor not making some movies. Very much so indeed.

I can understand thinking it's something of a jackass move to put people who own blu-ray players out in the cold, but really, it's a decision that had to be made sooner or later. Two formats with the same general use is bad for business - instead of one market for a product, you've suddenly got the blu-ray market and the hd dvd market to worry about. Frankly, it's better this happens sooner than later before more people buy players for the losing format, whichever it ends up being.

[sycks @ Aug 21st 2007 10:30AM]

This is link is why its a jackass move:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/21/technology/21disney.html?ei=5088&en=d4e1f285e2f41437&ex=1345348800&adxnnl=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&adxnnlx=1187698143-B5wO3L/F+4r1NyAsum87vQ

18 months, $150 million thats what prolonging this stupid war is worth.

[patsy @ Aug 21st 2007 11:13AM]

@Patrick:

> Michael Bay has pushed fx integration into films in brilliant ways, and he can tell a story at that.

I'm not arguing the sfx--although great effects hardly make him a brilliant director--but telling stories?! Do go on, please give a few examples of how Mr. Bay has great story telling talent. The biggest commonality of the movies listed by Ang a couple of posts above yours is cringe-inducing dialog, at times painfully so. Transformers was full of storyline discontinuities and dropped sub-plots and characters. The single biggest annoyance in my eyes were the highly jarring changes in plot focus, the worse example of which is probably the never-ending scene where the boy was looking for the glasses in his room, while the robots were trying to hide from his parents and were destroying the flower bed. Considering that the scene just prior to this was a frantic chase of save-the-world intensity, throttling down to teenage angst humor and worrying about flower beds while the fate of the world hangs in the balance is absolutely ridiculous. That about sums up Michael Bay in my book.

[Mark @ Aug 21st 2007 11:33AM]

@ Partick
First of all, your entire post rests on the package-deal fallacy which is a problem, just because he doesn't like Michael Bay, who is against blu-ray doesn't mean he's against Steven Spielberg. I don't like Steve Jobs, therefore I don't like all Americans. Doesn't work that way.
Second, yeah, I can't say that I respect Spielberg's decisions as of late either. He hasn't made a decent movie in 5 years. Let's take a look at his recent track record: Terminal, War of the Worlds and Munich. And considering he made his stance known recently, his opinion may be just as bad as Michael Bay's.
Finally, a person's success in one area doesn't guarantee that his opinion is valid in another. Al Gore is a successful politician, that doesn't mean that his opinion on global warming is correct or holds any intrinsic value.

[dj-kenpo @ Aug 21st 2007 12:25PM]

add one more vote the distatse for bay. odds are they don't want him back anyways so he's throwing a temper tantrum "fine I don't want to do another one anyways!"

remember the island? a greta story idea turned into a hoverbike shit fest? or, hey look a turned the reactor off, so it explodes. I go through the same thing wehnever I turn off the lights in my apartment.

the mans makes horrible movies. the only reason tranformers was half descent is A) robots B) we all went in with SUCH LOW expectatiosn after hearing it was the man behind bad boys 2 that just about anythign would have looked good. i mean, bad boys 2 for god sake.

micael, if you're trollingand reading these, which I 100% bet you are, stop making movies, hollywood needs less braindead flicks, audiences aren't stupid and hollywood jackasses liek you that think all people want/can handle is 3 lines of dialog + explosions need to go away. there are so many great film makers not able to make movies right now it's mind blowing. we don't need anymore bad ones.

[Evan @ Aug 21st 2007 1:45PM]

@sycks

What a great article to site for information... unnamed sources, no quotes for HD DVD, and a writer that obviously isn't to engaged with technology. Not to mention the flat out flub with the Target reference. The article was full of over generalizations and depicted HD DVD as the bad guy.

Why is everyone so cranky that now we actually have a real format war? Sorry for your luck, but nobody should just hand stuff on a platter to Sony. Also, if you want to talk about payoffs... I hope you honestly don't think that Sony magically conjured up all this support for Blu-Ray without dropping a dime.

The bottom line is this doesn't even matter yet. Half the people with HDTV's don't even know how to use them.

[Dave @ Aug 21st 2007 2:50PM]

Right, because killing the competition is great for the consumer.

[Jnas @ Aug 21st 2007 6:12AM]

Michael speaks the truth! Him and Spielberg are legends. If the bluray consumer boycotting paramount won't have an effect, i'm sure Michael Bay doing it will :D

[Eric @ Aug 21st 2007 6:18AM]

Michael Bay a legend?

Well I guess his movies are so bad they are legendary....

I believe I will be picking up an HD player in the near future now.

[theboss @ Aug 21st 2007 6:43AM]

Please, Micheal Bay isn't shi*. There have been countless movies released on only Blu Ray and I don't see anyone complaining! WHERE PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN HD DVD??? HUH?? Transformers 2??? GTFOH

[mattclarkie @ Aug 21st 2007 9:35AM]

I am not much of a fan of him. Want to see transformers, but I agree with what he has said. I heard that Paramount and Dreamworks were paid $150million to pull this little stunt, and all it will do is prolong the format war.

Blu-ray will and should win, but with films like Shrek the Third as HD-DVD exclusives, HD-DVD will be able to hold out even longer before throwing in the towel which is a bad thing for all of us.

[Jason @ Aug 21st 2007 10:49AM]

HD-DVD is the better format and it should win. Discs are cheaper, players are cheaper. And it has requirements for the audio used on the discs. So you are gurenteed to have better sound on HD-DVD, it's optional on blue ray.
Note phantom of the opera in HD-DVD has TrueHD sound and in Blue Ray is just 5.1

HD-DVD disc features are compatible with all players. New blue ray features are not and require newer players to access newer features placed on discs.

[MacGuru @ Aug 21st 2007 5:05PM]

I have a PS3 and want to see High Definition movies.
If any movie (like The Good Shepherd) is not on Blu Ray, then I will see it when it hits HBO. I'm not going to buy a HD DVD player just to see a movie that's not on BD. It's that simple.

[McGinley @ Aug 21st 2007 6:12AM]

So childish...

[MR @ Aug 21st 2007 6:15AM]

What the hell is up with these fanboys?
"Best formats possible"? Both of them are using the same freaking codec!!

[Brian @ Aug 21st 2007 6:27AM]

I think he meant that if you have a bluray player you should be able to buy it on bluray and not just standard dvd. I think he is suggesting that "choice" has been taken away from us and any time that happens it is not good for us.

[Namarrgon @ Aug 21st 2007 7:52AM]

Wait... you're saying the Format War is a *good* thing?

[Ray-- @ Aug 21st 2007 8:47AM]

does he even film his movies in HD??

[csb1227 @ Aug 21st 2007 9:00AM]

Film is better than HD. That's why we get things like the original Star Trek and Knight Rider in HD. They were shot on film.

[Xzavier @ Aug 21st 2007 9:35AM]

@Namarrgon: Brian stated ""choice" has been taken away from us and any time that happens it is not good for us".

IMHO, Choice/competition is a good thing!

You stated "Format War is a *good* thing". Wars are to annihilate the competition! Wars are not good p.e.r.o.i.d.

[draterrojam @ Aug 21st 2007 6:21AM]

what is he, like 8 years old? "i'm taking my ball and going home!"

get a life, besides, you made Optimus look like a little girl in the movie. Great movie, but I'm sure others can do better.

p.s. thanks for pearl harbor, I lost at least 100 brain cells and 3 hours of my life, and one recovering...I CAN'T GET THAT TIME BACK! CAN I!

[JohnDoe303 @ Aug 21st 2007 6:23AM]

Great move Mr. Bay! Thanks for the support! I mean in the end he's right, they're getting paid to limit his HD movies install base.. which in turn makes Mr. Bay lose money. I'd be pissed too!

[bob @ Aug 21st 2007 6:25AM]

"
What the hell is up with these fanboys?
"Best formats possible"? Both of them are using the same freaking codec!!"
is that true? i thought br was h264 and hddvd was something microsoft cooked up? hhmmm

[hemmy @ Aug 21st 2007 7:12AM]

Both HDDVD and Blu-ray have available to them the same codecs: Both HDDVD and Blu-ray can play movies encoded with MPEG2, VC-1, and AVC (h.264). Blu-ray's space and bandwidth advantage can help give it a slight edge in PQ even when both formats use the same codec, by using a greater bitrate during the encode.
(HDDVD bandwidth is somewhere about 30Mb/s vs. 48Mb/s for Blu-ray).

[Brian @ Aug 21st 2007 6:26AM]

Having the movie on both formats is the best thing for the consumer.

[OnimushaSoki @ Aug 21st 2007 6:38AM]

I agree. I refuse to believe it costs companies *that* much more to support these 3 disc formats(dvd, blu-ray, hd-dvd). As far as I'm concerned... Paramount could front both sides with ease.

[Ethan Duffy @ Aug 21st 2007 6:39AM]

I think in the long term it's better. Being able to choose from movies from any distributor is more important, having them all on the same format, so I think this is a positive thing if it means one format will eventually pull ahead. I think there's little to distinguish from the two, but HD-DVD is cheaper and has no region encoding, so I'll side with that. However I'd be almost as happy to see a move that gave Blu-Ray a genuine upper hand.

Of course, ideally everybody would release on both.

[Dom @ Aug 21st 2007 7:59AM]

On the other hand, you could argue that releasing on both formats just prolongs the whole 'format war' thing.

In the short term, yes, having a movie on both formats is good, but in the long term, companies need to make these decisions - or the format war will just go on forever.

[Alan Strangis @ Aug 21st 2007 9:29AM]

Brian say: Having the movie on both formats is the best thing for the consumer.

??? How can that be a highly ranked comment? The BEST thing for the consumer is for the format war to die, regardless of which is victorious. This point in time is anything BUT the 'best' thing.

[Shannon @ Aug 21st 2007 10:02AM]

@Dom

The best thing for the user is for THEM, the user, to choose which format should die, not M$ with their 150 million bribe (note: they were choosing HD-DVD by buying more than twice as many Blu-ray discs.)

[Ashley Allen @ Aug 21st 2007 6:35AM]

Awesome, Transformers was great but imagine how great it will be with a competent director!

[Zeus the God @ Aug 21st 2007 6:38AM]

"Pear Harbor"? Never heard of it... Is it any good?

[chris @ Aug 21st 2007 1:33PM]

Yes. It was an over-the-top movie about the ignominious Japanese sneak attack on the United States' pear orchards. The US was without full fruit salads for years.

[Zeus the God @ Aug 21st 2007 6:40AM]

Oh, and yeah, hes being very childish.

[Blaine @ Aug 21st 2007 6:48AM]

Michael Bay sucks, and while he does make a good point saying that this deal basically screws the consumer... then again this whole format war screws the consumer, and I for one just want it to be over with already so I can get my HD-DVD/Blu-ray player so I wont have to live in a sense of constant paranoia of my seemingly wise purchase becoming obsolete.

[PEZ @ Aug 21st 2007 7:00AM]

Pearl Harbor Sucked.

[Robotochan @ Aug 21st 2007 6:49AM]

I would like to see another director for Transformers 2 anyway :/

Matt and Trey got it right in their song Pearl Harbour

[Nikos @ Aug 21st 2007 6:51AM]

Hey ! Good idea !
Thanks Mickael for not making your next bad movie.

[Larsen @ Aug 21st 2007 7:00AM]

so funny he said that. the "format war" is far from over and the recent decision bei paramount and dreamworks just put a lot of fuel in the fire...

I think everybody will be fine with the lowered player and disc prices this "war" brings us. and every hd-fanatic needs to have both formats... but that was clear before p&d made the move.

[fraggle_rocker @ Aug 21st 2007 6:52AM]

I dont think he is being childish at all, He made the film at a time when he thought anyone would be able to watch it on hd-dvd or bluray..

Now we know paramount will make money from this deal, but he will probably loose money, he wont sell as many copies of the film if it isnt on both. He looses out while the production company gets a paycheck.

His pay probably includes money from bluray/hd-dvd sales.

up to half his audience, maybe more is lost, for no real reason. Up to half the money he could have made from the high def market gone..

I would be highly annoyed.