Things have gotten so bad in Hollywood that even Michael Bay is moving into independent filmmaking. At SXSW 2025, the “Transformers” director will be unveiling his latest work, “We Are Storror,” a documentary revolving around a group of free-running athletes who engage in parkour around the world and have millions of views on YouTube. Why take a break from huge action spectacles like “6 Underground” and “Ambulance?” To hear Bay explain, it seems that Hollywood just can’t keep up with his pace.
“I just had a conference call with Jim Cameron and we were both commiserating about Hollywood,” he said in a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter. “No one can greenlight anything anymore. It’s just so slow. It’s a very different business.”
When Bay’s career took off in the 1990s, the system seemed to encourage expediency rather than draw development out as it does today. He recalled how with “Armageddon,” he sat with the writer and a NASA expert for “two or three weeks,” worked out a pitch, and got it greenlit in the room.
“We go into [former Walt Disney Chairman] Joe Roth’s office. This would be my third movie. And Joe, he’s like a real old time, cool studio executive,” said Bay. “He goes, ‘That’s going to be my July 4th movie. I want to name it ‘Armageddon.” We walk out and we’re looking at each other. ‘Did he just greenlight that movie?’ That doesn’t happen now. But that’s how it used to happen.”
A hit back in 1998 and a classic now, “Armageddon” features a number of iconic scenes, but perhaps the one most remembered features lead Bruce Willis saying goodbye to his younger counterpart played by Ben Affleck. Contrary to the rough exterior they put up throughout the film, in this moment, both break down as they offer their last words to one another. As emotional as the scene was, Bay remembered shooting it as a bit of a gross endeavor.
“There was a three-gallon painting bucket next to Ben Affleck. He had the stomach flu,” Bay told THR. “He felt like shit. He looked like shit, too. And he had to do that scene between him throwing up. We kept shooting him. And he’s great in that. And he’s great in that partially because he had the stomach flu.”
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