"No One Can Greenlight Anything Anymore": Michael Bay Reflects On The Startling Hollywood Landscape After A Recent Call With James Cameron

Michael Bay reflects on the startling Hollywood landscape after a recent call with James Cameron. Two of the most commercially successful directors of all time, Bay is known for bombastic, big-budget action movies, including the first two Bad Boys movies, The Rock, Armageddon, Pearl Harbor, and the first five Transformers movies. Cameron, on the other hand, has won multiple Academy Awards in addition to directing three of the top five highest-grossing films of all time – тιтantic, Avatar, and Avatar: The Way of Water.

During an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Michael Bay reflected on a recent conference call he had with James Cameron “commiserating about Hollywood.” The two talked about how difficult it is to get projects greenlit today in Hollywood. During the interview, the director remembered how different it was when Armageddon was greenlit back in the late 1990s. Read his full comments below:

I just had a conference call with Jim Cameron and we were both commiserating about Hollywood. No one can greenlight anything anymore. It’s just so slow. It’s a very different business. During Armageddon, those were the days. We had Jonathan Hensleigh, the writer. We sat down for two or three weeks. We had the NASA guy come into my office. We worked out this 20-minute pitch. We go into [former Walt Disney Chairman] Joe Roth’s office. This would be my third movie. And Joe, he’s like a real old time, cool studio executive. He goes, “That’s going to be my July 4th movie. I want to name it Armageddon.” We walk out and we’re looking at each other. “Did he just greenlight that movie?” That doesn’t happen now. But that’s how it used to happen.

What Michael Bay’s Comments Mean For The Hollywood Landscape

Different Types Of Projects Are Being Greenlit

Michael Bay raises an important issue about the current state of Hollywood. However, it’s not exactly that “no one can greenlight anything anymore,” as Bay says, as much as the type of project that Hollywood greenlights has changed. There are fewer and fewer original, standalone, big-budget action movies, the kind that Bay used to specialize in with The Rock, Armageddon, and more. Instead, franchise films and projects based on pre-existing IPs are much more commonly greenlit today, which Bay experienced firsthand with the Transformers franchise.

It’s telling that Bay was “commiserating about Hollywood” with Cameron who, as previously mentioned, is also one of the most commercially successful directors of all time and shouldn’t have any trouble getting his projects greenlit by studios. However, for more than the past decade, Cameron has struggled getting his Last Train from Hiroshima movie off the ground. Instead, he has seemingly resigned to making Avatar movies for the time being, with three more sequels on the way after The Way of Water.

Our Take On Michael Bay’s Comments On The Hollywood Landscape

Has He Been Driven Away From Hollywood?

The startling state of Hollywood has seemingly driven the director away for the time being. However, he does have a new documentary about parkour, We Are Storror, premiering at the 2025 South by Southwest Film Festival this weekend. It also doesn’t sound like his Netflix film with Will Smith, Fast and Loose, is going into production anytime soon. Instead, some of Michael Bay‘s upcoming projects may be directing television. It’s certainly sad that the startling state of Hollywood has seemingly driven away one of the most commercially successful, albeit divisive, directors in the business.

Source: THR