Those Autobots just keep pulling him back in. Michael Bay confirmed that he will return for Transformers 5 despite claiming that he would never revisit the franchise.
“I’m doing Transformers … 5, is it?” he said in an interview with Rolling Stone. “Transformers, I still have a great time. It’s fun to do a movie that 100 million people will see. But this is the last one. I have to pass the reins to someone else.”
He added: “[I]t’s time to move on. One more.”
Take Bay’s word with a healthy dose of skepticism. The director claimed to be finished with the blockbuster series after the third film, Transformers: Dark of the Moon, and the fourth film, Transformers: Age of Extinction. And yet he’s back in the directors’ chair for a fifth installment, with Mark Wahlberg returning as his star.
Bay is branching out though: His gritty film 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi about the security team that defended the U.S. consulate in Libya hits theaters on Jan. 15.
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Write to Eliana Dockterman at eliana.dockterman@time.com