What's the best and quickest way to vastly improve a presumably underwhelming Transformers sequel? Hire a genuinely talented comedian to balance out the Michael Bayness, of course. Jerrod Carmichael, he of The Carmichael Show and Neighbors, is reportedly very close to joining Mark Wahlberg and company in next year's Transformers 5. Sources close to the production confirmed the talks to the Wrap, though Paramount has declined to confirm or deny them.
The tentatively titled Transformers 5, as years of Transformers sequels have astutely informed us, will feature a veritable assortment of loud robot noises and Tomatometer-boosting displays of logic. Michael Bay recently confirmed that he will indeed be back in the director's chair for the fifth installment, though he also swore to Rolling Stone that this "is [his] last one."
Transformers 5 will not, however, be the last Transformers ever. Instead, Bay is giving the franchise the Star Wars treatment with a barrage of sequels and spin-offs in the years ahead. The first spin-off, an untitled meditation on the life and times of Bumblebee, is currently being put on track for a 2018 release. "There are characters in the Transformers universe that can be and should be made into their own movies," Paramount Pictures CEO Brad Grey told the Hollywood Reporter in February. "We will make the first movie with Michael and go right into a Bumblebee movie, which will be at a lower cost."
Carmichael, who can currently be spotted in The Meddler, can next be seen in Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising. As its title suggests, this round of neighborly shenanigans is kind of like the first one but with a sorority twist:
