Bay Worries About Small, Low-Profile Transformers Sequel

Help! Have you heard of this movie?

The Hollywood Reporter has an amusing (leaked) memo written by Michael Bay to Paramount Pictures, the studio behind this week’s “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.” Apparently he felt that Paramount wasn’t promoting the movie, and it was…umm…forgotten in the summer shuffle?

“Right now we are not an event. We are just a sequel, which is very different. There is no anticipation. Remember back to ‘Spider-Man 2′ — it was everywhere,” he wrote.

Bay added that advance word on the $200 million robot extravaganza in publications like Entertainment Weekly, the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times had been an “abject failure,” and he described as “lame” a plan for him to preview a small clip at the MTV Movie Awards this month.

“I cannot figure if this is a cash issue with your company? Is there some clever idea why we are not spending? I’m not sure,” he said. “I’m sure though the movie will do fine, but not to your internal expectations because right now we are fooling ourselves by being cocky.”

Of course, all this pique seems silly in light of “Transformers” blockbuster international opening this weekend. And no buzz? Really? It seems like I’ve seen a lot of ads for the movie and I’ve heard a lot of people talking about it. If there is any truth to the idea that the studio isn’t promoting it, I might almost think that it was because they felt they didn’t have to, as I think there IS buzz around it. Hey, I’m not interested but I think plenty of people are aware of the movie. What did Bay want? A couple of explosions and a giant robot in cities across the US?

To be fair, he did also write a follow-up memo thanking the studio for their efforts. That’s because I guess he wants to work again (not that that will be a problem if this opens big; in Hollywood, a stellar opening weekend will always trump “pain in the ass to deal with”).