14 DAY TRIAL // Michael Bay is now shooting his fourth “Transformers” movie in Hong Kong but, as he explains in a post on his official blog, production came to a screeching halt the other day, when he was attacked by a group of “drugged up” “zombies.”
According to reports online, the director received an injury to his face but did not go to the hospital for it. Other people were also injured in the melee, including cops who were trying to break up the fight.
As Bay puts it, the “zombies” were street vendors under the influence of narcotics, thinking they could cause a ruckus to get him to pay them more money for the disruption caused by the shoot.
They wanted the equivalent of $12,000 (€8,782) even though they had already been paid handsomely for their trouble and, of course, had initially said they were ok with the agreement.
“Yes, some drugged up guys were being belligerent [expletive]s to my crew for hours in the morning of our first shoot day in Hong Kong. One guy rolled metal carts into some of my actors trying to shake us down for thousands of dollars to not play his loud music or hit us with bricks,” Bay explains.
“Every vendor where we shot got paid a fair price for our inconvenience, but he wanted four times that amount. I personally told this man and his friends to forget it we were not going to let him extort us. He didn’t like that answer,” he explains.
It was this man who returned to the set carrying an air conditioning unit, which he tried to throw at Bay’s head.
“I ducked, threw the air unit on the floor and pushed him away. That’s when the security jumped on him. But it took seven big guys to subdue him. It was like a Zombie in Brad Pitt’s movie World War Z – he lifted seven guys up and tried to bite them. He actually bit into one of the guards Nike shoe, insane. Thank god it was an Air Max, the bubble popped, but the toe was saved,” the director explains.
“Then it took fifteen Hong Kong cops in riot gear to deal with these punks. In all, four guys were arrested for assaulting the officers,” he adds.
Police have confirmed that two brothers have been arrested and charged with blackmail and assault of a police officer. One of them has been hospitalized, together with several cops.