 Michael Bay: Aggressive Visual Style, High-Octane Action!
After launching his career as an award-winning commercial and music video director, Michael Bay quickly emerged as one of Hollywood's boldest and most bankable feature film directors. Characterized by his aggressive visual style, high-octane action sequences and quick-cut editing that have become the L.A. native's cinematic signature, Bay's half-dozen films have topped nearly $2 billion in worldwide ticket sales.
Now established as one of the industry's elite action filmmakers, Bay's latest effort is Transformers, one of this summer's most hotly anticipated movie events.
Bay has been dazzling audiences since the premiere of his first feature film, Bad Boys, starring Will Smith and Martin Lawrence, in 1995. Nominated for Best Action Sequence at the MTV Movie Awards, the film grossed over $140 million worldwide, making it Columbia Pictures' top-grossing film of that year.
Bay's impressive sophomore effort, The Rock, starring Sean Connery and Nicolas Cage, followed a year later. Shot on location on Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay, The Rock surpassed Bay's blockbuster debut, taking in more than $300 million worldwide. His third directing effort, Armageddon, which he produced with Jerry Bruckheimer, starred Bruce Willis, Ben Affleck and Liv Tyler, and earned over $550 million around the globe.
Bay continued his hot streak in 2001, directing the epic Pearl Harbor and sharing producer credit on the film with Bruckheimer. Their collaboration once again bore fruit, as Pearl Harbor raked in $450 million in box office receipts worldwide. In 2003, Bay reteamed with Smith, Lawrence and Bruckheimer for the summer hit Bad Boys II. The filmmaker's most recent effort was the action thriller The Island, starring Ewan McGregor, Scarlett Johansson, Djimon Hounsou, Sean Bean and Steve Buscemi, which earned receipts totaling more than $160 million.
Bay's production company, Bay Films, remains one of the most cutting-edge production entities in Hollywood today and continues to grow. Five years ago, Bay joined forces with producers Brad Fuller and Andrew Form to create Platinum Dunes, a company whose mission is to make films with budgets under $20 million that would give talented commercial and video directors the chance to break into the feature world. The first offering from the company was The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, a re-imagining of the 1974 cult classic, which opened to top-notch reviews and grossed over $110 million worldwide. The company's second film, The Amityville Horror, reached receipts of more than $108 million. Two more films quickly followed: the original script, Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2: The Beginning, which earned $51 million; and a re-conceptualization of the 1986 thriller, The Hitcher, that garnered close to $20 million.
Fresh out of film school in 1989, Bay began directing commercials and music videos for Propaganda Films. His works for such acts as Meat Loaf, Aerosmith, Tina Turner, Donny Osmond, and the DiVinyls won the young filmmaker recognition, acclaim, and a number of MTV Video Award nominations. He won the coveted Best Music Video prize in 1992.
When Bay's first television spot -- for the American Red Cross -- was honored with a Clio in 1992, it heralded the aspiring film director's rapid ascent from unknown film school grad to creative force. Over the next three years, the Wesleyan University graduate would direct some of the best known and most acclaimed advertising campaigns in the world, including those for Nike, Budweiser, Coca Cola, Reebok and Miller. In 1995, Bay was honored by the Directors Guild of America as Commercial Director of the Year.
Bay is the youngest director to have won nearly every award bestowed by the advertising industry. He won the Grand Prix Clio for Commercial of the Year for the irreverent "Got Milk?/Aaron Burr" commercial; this famous spot, along with two others in the "Got Milk?" campaign created by Bay, won Best Campaign of the Year at New York's Museum of Modern Art. In Cannes, at the world's largest competition for commercials, Bay won the Gold Lion for "The Best Beer" campaign for Miller, and the Silver Lion for the "Got Milk?" spot.
Bay's next film is The Horsemen, which he executive produced. Scheduled for release in December, the fifth release under the Platinum Dunes banner stars Dennis Quaid, Ziyi Zhang, Peter Stormare and Eric Balfour under the direction of Jonas Åkerlund.
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