On Saturday, Screen Rant reported on Michael Bay’s personal project that he’d be working on before moving on to rounding off the Transformers trilogy.

Transformers 3 was initially planned for a 2011 release, making each film in the series two years apart, but Bay wanted an extra year so he could work on what he described as a “small movie” - a project entirely different from his usual cup of exploding tea.

Bay described the proposed film as such:

“It’s good… It’s like a ‘Pulp Fiction’ type of movie… [It's based on] a true story, and it’s very funny… It’s a dark comedy.”

Thanks to Peter over at /Film, we now know what this passion project of Bay’s is all about – It’s based on a series of lengthy articles written by Pete Collins, published between December 23, 1999 and January, 2000 in the Miami New Times titled Pain & Gain.

Bay was reported to produce and direct this project way back in December of 2001 but the project was delayed indefinitely until now. The true story follows a gang of local Miami Beach bodybuilders “with a penchant for steroids, strippers, and quick cash” who got into kidnapping, torture and extortion.

Fun!

As mentioned above, this piece provides a story for Bay to adapt to screen unlike anything he’s done before. It will act as a perfect test to see if Bay can present us with a pure character-driven piece. The project is currently untitled so we can expect a possible name change from the current “Pain & Gain.”

Chronicles of Narnia writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely (who are writing The First Avenger: Captain America) will be writing the screenplay.

You can read the full article at Miami New Times.

What do you think of Bay’s pet project?

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen opens June 24, 2009.

Sources: /Film