Director Michael Bay has shared that he and James Cameron have been discussing the state of the movie industry.
“I just had a conference call with Jim Cameron and we were both commiserating about Hollywood,” Bay told The Hollywood Reporter. “No one can greenlight anything anymore. It’s just so slow. It’s a very different business.
“During Armageddon, those were the days,” he continued, referring to his ’98 disaster movie. “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.”
Both Bay and Cameron are legendary directors in their own right, so if even they are thinking times are tough, then it’s a pretty good indicator of how much the industry has changed over the past few decades.
Bay is debuting his new parkour documentary We Are Storror at SXSW Film Festival, while next up for Cameron is Avatar 3, which he recently confirmed “will actually be a little bit longer” than Avatar: The Way of Water.
Avatar 3, titled Fire and Ash, arrives this December 19. In the meantime, fill out your watchlist with our guide to the most exciting upcoming movies of the year.