Michael Bay’s Transformers films were a hit when the franchise first launched in 2007, but fans quickly turned on the franchise after several sequels. According to the director, another legendary filmmaker told him to stop making the films early on in their history.
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Speaking to Unilad UK, Bay revealed that Steven Spielberg told Bay that he should stop making Transformers movies following the third film, Transformers: Age of Extinction. Bay also acknowledge that he probably should have listened to Spielberg at the time.
“I made too many of them,” Bay said. “Steven Spielberg said, ‘Just stop at three’. And I said I’d stop. The studio begged me to do a fourth, and then that made a billion too. And then I said I’m gonna stop here. And they begged me again. I should have stopped. [But] they were fun to do.”
Bay’s final entry in the Transformers franchise was the 2017 film Transformers: The Last Knight. That film was critically panned and disliked by many of the fanbase, and went on to earn the least amount of money for the franchise, pulling in just over $605 million worldwide. While Bay’s final chapter with Transformers may have been a bumpy one, he still seemed to have fun, and recalled just how nervewracking the first film was to work on.
“It was technology we didn’t know would work, and then it became very successful,” explained Bay. “It was the first time digital effects were that highly reflective, so it broke a lot of new ground. It was a fun experience. It made more than [$709 million], that’s a lot of movie tickets and a lot of people that have seen it.”
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Despite Bay stepping away from the Transformers franchise, the films are continuing on. Following the 2018 spin-off film Bumblebee, a new Transformers film, Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, is set to premiere in 2023, and will be directed by Stephen Cable Jr. (Creed II) and star Anthony Ramos, Dominique FIshback, and Luna Lauren Vélez.