Bay’s Platinum Dunes Signs with Paramount

Published by Jeff Leins on: October 7th, 2009

Michael Bay’s production company, Platinum Dunes, has signed a first look deal with Paramount Pictures to bring more low-budget genre films to the studio.

Since its creation in 2001 by Bay, Brad Fuller, and Andrew Form, Platinum Dunes has primarily focused on horror remakes including The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Friday the 13th, and the upcoming redo of A Nightmare on Elm Street.

As an arm of Paramount, the company will continue to focus on what they’ve built their name on, like a new original project “The Butcherhouse Chronicles” being described as “The Breakfast Club in a haunted house.”  Though the new deal will allow them to expand to thrillers and action films as well.  It’ll be nice to see them try something new and hopefully it won’t shift to the bright idea of remaking classic thrillers instead.

The deal and its timing could mean Paramount and Platinum Dunes worked out an agreement as part of the contract that officially brought Bay back for Transformers 3 at the studio.  He recently returned from a trip to Rhode Island with screenwriter Ehren Kruger to meet with Hasbro about the future of the franchise and discuss new characters to introduce in the next installment.

After his trip, Bay spoke with Variety about the thought of making another giant robot movie.  “I found myself tossing and turning, and realized there was a reason I originally wanted to push the film until 2012, and do a small movie in between,” the 44-year-old director said. “This is hard, and I’m getting too old for this pressure.”

Is it me or does he sound like he’s maybe a little too old to be whining about the burden of being a multi-millionaire director/producer?  The article points out in his spare down time he shot a Victoria’s Secret commercial.  Poor Michael Bay.