Some of the most interesting stuff I hear pops up during casual conversations (in this case, over ribs with a bunch of other crew folks).
According to a friend of mine who's lined up to work on Transformers, Michael Bay is refusing to direct the movie if it shoots outside of the United States.
Basically, what this means is that if Paramount/Dreamworks decide to film the movie in Canada, they'll have to find another director, and they'll still have to pay Michael his rate under his "pay or play" contract.
Sweet.
Michael, you rock. Keep that work at home!*
*no offense intended to any of my non US-based readers. You all rock, too.
15 comments:
None taken. Strong work! JW
Optimus Prime (hearts) the USA! :-)
"For once, I wish Megatron the best of luck."
Whatever his motivations it's fun to see someone get one over on Hollywood producers.
Joss Whedon did much the same thing with Serenity. The LA Times did a whole article about how shooting in LA was cheaper than going elsewhere becaue you had people who knew what they were doing and did the job on time.
Made in the USA!
Charli
I probably won't even go see that movie, but I'm glad he's keeping it here.
guess you didn't hear he's scouting canada next week ... ?
All this pro-USA talk reminds me of this picture. :)
http://www.edaraquel.com/_personal/get_a_brain.jpg
Please don't take this the wrong way, but while the US deserves the work, The Transformers deserves a better director. I'm torn between wanting more local employment or a better film. A crappy film could further hurt the film industry as a whole - and thus result in less work over all.
So, maybe a non-US shoot would be a good thing.
(oh how i love to post sometimes just to be contrary)
Does anyone remember the G1 cartoons?
The American version was a little shoddy, but as with the movie, the Japanese version looked awesome.
I have a feeling it'll be similar with the movie.
After all, America has very limiting tastes in directing and need to wise up and realize that there are viewers outside the land of twinkies and cowboys. :)
First of all Transformers will be another inflated budget piece of crap movie , Bay will be perfect for it . The only good thing if it is shot here is it means work for us in this crazy business .... and the bottom line is we need the work weather its a good film or bad .
Just because he has strong convictions about filming in the US, doesn't mean he is still not an overblown hack. "Keep the work at home!" I say "Make the work at home more cost effective!"
In the end, they don't really save any money shooting in Canada, it just puts more cash in the producer's pocket. It would be nice if some of our overpaid stars would do the same as Michael Bay (yeah, he's still a hack who would be much better at designing video games, but Canada is killing us below-the-line people so more power to him!)
I am new to the industry, what does being "hack" mean?
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