MICHAEL BAY (Director/Producer) is one of the film industry’s most successful action directors. He made his feature film directorial debut in 1995 on the action comedy hit “Bad Boys,” which established both Will Smith and Martin Lawrence as action stars and launched Bay’s hugely successful alliance with producer Jerry Bruckheimer. The following year, Bay scored an even more impressive hit with the big-budget actioner “The Rock,” starring Sean Connery, Nicolas Cage and Ed Harris. The film wowed critics and audiences alike and took in more than $335 million worldwide, becoming one of the mega hits of 1996.
Continuing to build on his own success, Bay reunited with Bruckheimer to make “Armageddon,” based on a story Bay conceived with writer Jonathan Hensleigh. Starring Bruce Willis, Ben Affleck, Billy Bob Thornton and Liv Tyler, “Armageddon” earned more than $550 million at the worldwide box office, making it the top-grossing film of 1998 globally, and making Bay one of the youngest directors ever to reach the billion-dollar mark.
Bay next took on one of the most momentous events in history when he directed the epic “Pearl Harbor,” which he also produced with Bruckheimer. A sweeping saga of love and war, the film starred Ben Affleck, Josh Hartnett, Kate Beckinsale, Jon Voight and Alec Baldwin. “Pearl Harbor” became a hit with young audiences and World War II veterans alike, going on to gross $450 million. Today it stands as one of the top-selling DVDs of all time.
More recently, Bay helmed “Bad Boys II,” which emerged as one of the biggest hits of the highly competitive summer of 2003, going on to gross more than $270 million at the worldwide box office. Reteaming Will Smith and Martin Lawrence, the film also marked Bay’s fifth collaboration with Bruckheimer.
A Los Angeles native, Bay graduated from the prestigious film program at Wesleyan University, and then studied at Pasadena’s Art Center College of Design. He began his career making music videos, earning praise for directing Donny Osmond’s musical comeback video. Soon after, he was recruited by Propaganda Films, where he directed award-winning videos for such artists as Aerosmith, Tina Turner, Meat Loaf, and the DiVinyls.
Segueing to commercials, Bay won a coveted Clio Award for his first television ad, for the American Red Cross. He went on to direct some of the most widely seen and best remembered commercials in history, including spots for Nike, Budweiser, Levi’s, Bugle Boy, Coca-Cola, Isuzu, Miller, Mercedes, and the latest provocative Victoria’s Secret campaigns. Perhaps his most honored ads—and among the most imitated—are from the “Got Milk?” commercial campaign, which Bay created. He won a Grand Prix Clio for Commercial of the Year for the “Got Milk?/Aaron Burr” spot, which was dubbed one of the top ten commercials of all time by USA Today and the History Channel. Bay also garnered the Museum of Modern Art Award for Best Campaign of the Year. By the age of 26, Bay had won every major directing prize for commercials, including many Gold and Silver Lions at Cannes, and a Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement for Commercials.
Bay recently established his Platinum Dunes production banner, designed to create lower-budgeted film fare to help new directors break into movies. The first feature under the Platinum Dunes shingle was a re-imagining of the cult-hit horror film “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” which Bay produced. The next effort from Platinum Dunes, also produced by Bay, was a remake of the horror classic “The Amityville Horror,” released earlier this year. Next up is “The Hitcher,” and there are four other films on Platinum Dunes’ upcoming slate. Bay also recently helped found a commercial and music video production entity, The Institute for the Development of Enhanced Perceptual Awareness, which represents several directors.
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