He may have his critics, like any other director, but you can’t argue that Michael Bay knows how to make a pretty damn successful movie, with his box office takings being overwhelmingly impressive.

His feature directorial debut, Bad Boys, took almost 0m., followed by The Rock and then Armageddon, which took north of 0m. and 0m. respectively. The man knows how to make a great film that people want to see.

His latest film, Transformers: Dark of the Moon, the third in the recent Transformers franchise, earned more than a billion dollars internationally. More than a billion. At the time, he’d announced that it would be his final time directing a Transformers movie, three films into the franchise, but it looks like he may be re-thinking his decision.

Collider report, with tip-offs from EntertainmentWeekly, /Film, and Channel News Asia, that in an interview with EW, Steven Spielberg, who’s worked as executive producer on all the Transformers films, was asked whether he thought Bay would return to direct a fourth instalment, and this was his reply:

“I hope so, because I think he made the best of the three with this last one. I certainly can’t imagine anybody other than Michael being equipped to make another Transformers. He’s invented a genre and he’s got the secret formula.”

Though it’s only a ‘hope’, in his words, I definitely think he has a point. Bay does seem to have the secret formula, and I really can’t imagine anyone else taking the helm in his place. The Transformers director himself recently spoke to Channel News Asia about the possibility and said,

“How did I know someone’s going to ask me this question today? We’re talking about it, but there’s nothing right now. I’m going to do a tiny movie first, then we’ll talk about it, if I potentially do it.”

So fans of the franchise and fans of Bay, keep your fingers crossed. I’m a big fan of Bay’s films, and would love to see him take on another Transformers film. I think a lot of people would agree that Dark of the Moon was a big improvement on Revenge of the Fallen, and with a fourth movie all but inevitable, I think it only seems right that Bay would be the one to take it on.

That small film he wants to do first looks to be a project called Pain and Gain, a black comedy that he’d initially wanted to do between the second and third Transformers films. Since that is low-budget, and has been in the pipeline for some time, let’s hope that it won’t take too long to get production on it underway and completed, because it should be a great project too.

And once it’s finished, then we might well get to see him return for a fourth Transformers film. The question would then, of course, be whether or not Shia LaBeouf would return as the lead. LaBeouf has said that Dark of the Moon would be his final Transformers film too, but if Bay were to return, I wouldn’t rule LaBeouf out as a possibility at all. More as we get it.