To put it in VH1-like parlance, Paramount Pictures are having the worst week ever. On Friday, two of their top execs — John Lesher and Brad Weston — were ousted.
And maybe this is part of the reason why? Aside from “Star Trek,” admittedly a big hit, the year’s biggest so far, Paramount, like many major studios, are having a hard time finding consistent hits. Eddie Murphy’s “Imagine That” recently tanked big time and now an angry email memo allegedly from “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” director Michael Bay has surfaced, and the filmmaker is purportedly pissed about the mishandled and lame marketing on the picture so far.
“I have been waiting, and waiting for the anticipation of an ‘event movie’ to make it into the ‘public zeitgeist,’ Bay supposedly wrote according to TMZ, who says they scored a copy of the memo. Bay calls the print campaign an”abject failure,” with a “pathetic presence” in the L.A. Times and was unhappy with the film’s almost non-existence at the the MTV Movie Awards. “So lame,” he wrote (that sounds like something Bay would say, no?)
“A studio that does not make [the opening of a movie] an event…. will get bitten in the ass. Besides my good friend Steven [Spielberg], Jerry [Bruckheimer] has made a lot more successful movies then (sic) all of us. Is this is a cash issue with your company? Is there some clever idea why are we not spending? I’m not sure.” Vulture cheekily notices how Bay butchers the English language with more quotes. A good laugh.
“Transformers 2” is already getting mixed reviews overseas and apparently there are grumblings even within the geek community here in the U.S. from writers generally into Bay’s work. Although embargoes on reviews are presumably still in place, some can’t resist the urge to throw digs in related articles. “Transformers 2 is hugely bloated, incoherent, stupid and boring, seemingly all because Bay was free to indulge in his most Bayish impulses. The first film is rescued by the restraining hand of Spielberg; that hand is noticeably gone here,” Devin at Chud writes.
However, is “Transformers 2” critic proof even if all its constituents turn against it? Feels like it. We’ll find out soon enough, the movie opens this Wednesday.