Aug 23, 2007 12:04 PM
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San Francisco, 3:43 PM
Tue Feb 9
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In an effort to prove he's as fickle as he is talented, Transformers director Michael Bay has retracted what he calls a Kool-Aid-fueled denouncement of Paramount's deal to support, exclusively, the HD-DVD format for high-definition movie discs. When Bay first heard the news, he posted, "I want people to see my movies in the best formats possible. For [Paramount] to deny people who have Blu-ray sucks!" In what could only have been a fit of rage, he then decreed there would be no Transformers 2. Why the change in tune?
Bay later explained that his rant was spurred by a dinner conversation with a few "Blu-ray owners" who were upset over the announcement. He "over reacted [sic]." He then sat down and watched 300 on HD-DVD and declared himself a convert. Good news. He's back on the Paramount bandwagon, spouting something about $200 HD players and that he "liked what he heard." Was it the sound of money? Cause he's reconsidering his rash decision about Transformers 2 as well.
Money was definitely a motivator for the Viacom-owned studio, Paramount's CTO has confessed. Though perhaps not in the way some think. Alan Bell praised HD-DVD's cheapness, which he attributes to the fact that the HD-DVD standard is more settled, making it less expensive to produce both discs and players. He also claimed Paramount liked various technical features in HD-DVD. Of course, the $150 million in marketing dollars Paramount received from a consortium of HD-DVD supporters doesn't look that cheap.
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