Michael Bay signs up to direct Transformers 4

Though director Michael Bay seemed adamant that the third Transformers film, released just last summer to lukewarm reviews, would be his last, the 'splosion-loving director has signed up to helm the fourth film in the franchise.

Producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura confirmed Bay’s involvement to MTV , and announced a release date of summer 2014.

“Yeah Michael’s gonna direct and it’ll be releasing in the summer of 2014,” said Bonaventura. “We’re excited and I think the challenge there is we really are gonna do a reboot, and what that’s gonna be we don’t even know yet.”

Seeing as the Transformers franchise has always been a massive money-spinner for Bay ( Dark Of The Moon made $1bn worldwide), it’s not difficult to see why he’d be tempted to return for a fourth round of robots beating the crap out of each other.

That said, both 2009’s Revenge Of The Fallen and last year’s Dark Of The Moon received a critical drubbing, which is perhaps why the mega-director has decided to give the franchise a refresh.

We can probably count series regular Shia Labeouf out, then, so expect a new lead and a shiny new set of Autobots for the franchise that refuses to die with any dignity.

Transformers 4 will open in the USA on 29 June 2014. A UK release date has yet to be confirmed.

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Josh Winning has worn a lot of hats over the years. Contributing Editor at Total Film, writer for SFX, and senior film writer at the Radio Times. Josh has also penned a novel about mysteries and monsters, is the co-host of a movie podcast, and has a library of pretty phenomenal stories from visiting some of the biggest TV and film sets in the world. He would also like you to know that he "lives for cat videos..." Don't we all, Josh. Don't we all.  

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