- It might not be Armageddon 2 in the technical sense, but Michael Bay has hinted at a spiritual (and conceptual) follow-up to the beloved sci-fi disaster movie with Black Five.
- Another ensemble thriller initially announced in 2019, and conceived during the production of Armageddon, Black Five follows an “elite military team with an advanced technology.”
- The highest-grossing release of 1998, Armageddon starred a heavyweight cast of Bruce Willis, Billy Bob Thornton, Liv Tyler, Ben Affleck, Keith David, Steve Buscemi, and more.
Few filmmakers commanded the same blockbuster clout in the late 90s/early 2000s as Michael Bay.
Between the Bad Boys franchise and subsequent Transformers saga, the All-American cinema fixture wasn’t exactly a stranger to sequels, either.
So why didn’t he ever craft a sequel to one of his more iconic films in Armageddon despite grossing over $550 million worldwide while gifting us with an immortal tearjerker of an original song to go with that nobly self-sacrificial ending? More importantly: is there any narrative wiggle room or interest from Bay himself for something like this?
“Potentially. There’s a [project] called Black Five,” Bay told The Hollywood Reporter – referencing another ensemble thriller first announced back in 2019, that apparently centres on an “elite military team with an advanced technology.”
“It’s an original idea that I came up with when I was doing Armageddon [after talking to a] physics person from NASA. That’s something I would love to do.”
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The director added in reference to his forthcoming parkour documentary We Are Storror: “As a director, I like to just do fun things to keep me interested, and I love shooting. That’s why I wanted to try the documentary experiment. I liked using different muscles.”
“That movie was such a blast. It was like a summer camp and I was the counsellor. Everyone was so misbehaved and so funny.”
But not everyone was enjoying the blockbuster ride. Aside from his well-documented issues with the screenplay, a certain cast member was at war with his own guts.
Bay continued: “I’ll tell you the truth: there was a three-gallon painting bucket next to Ben Affleck. He had the stomach flu. He felt like s**t. He looked like s**t, too. And he had to do that scene between him throwing up. We kept shooting him. And he’s great in that. And he’s great in that partially because he had the stomach flu.”
What exactly is stopping Armageddon 2 – or more appropriately Black Five – from seeing the light of day? In the same conversation with The Hollywood Reporter, Michael Bay mourned the industry’s run-and-gun golden era.
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“I just had a conference call with Jim Cameron and we were both commiserating about Hollywood. No one can greenlight anything anymore. It’s just so slow. It’s a very different business,” he explained.
“During Armageddon… those were the days. 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.”
Given all the nostalgia-based sequels that have been storming the box office recently, however, perhaps Black Five might soon join the same pantheon that currently houses the likes of Top Gun: Maverick and Gladiator II.
