Michael Bay attached to direct sci-fi thriller Time Salvager

Last Updated on August 5, 2021

The Wrap has learned Michael Bay is attached to helm a film adaptation of the soon-to-be-published Wesley Chu (The Lives of Tao) novel Time Salvager for Paramount. The director's TRANSFORMERS: AGE OF EXTINCTION producers Lorenzo di Bonaventura and Mark Vahradian will produce the sci-fi thriller, which seems to be a mix between 12 MONKEYS and AFTER EARTH.

Here's the (lengthy) book description from Amazon:

Convicted criminal James Griffin-Mars is no one's hero. In his time, Earth is a toxic, abandoned world and humans have fled into the outer solar system to survive, eking out a fragile, doomed existence among the other planets and their moons. Those responsible for delaying humanity's demise believe time travel holds the key, and they have identified James, troubled though he is, as one of a select and expendable few ideally suited for the most dangerous job in history.
 
James is a chronman, undertaking missions into Earth's past to recover resources and treasure without altering the timeline. The laws governing use of time travel are absolute; break any one of them and, one way or another, your life is over. Most chronmen never reach old age; the stress of each jump through time, compounded by the risk to themselves and to the future, means that many chronmen rapidly reach their breaking point, and James Griffin-Mars is nearing his.

On a final mission that is to secure his retirement, James meets Elise Kim, an intriguing scientist from a previous century, who is fated to die during the destruction of an oceanic rig. Against his training and his common sense, and in violation of the chronmen's highest law, James brings Elise back to the future with him, saving her life, but turning them both into fugitives. Remaining free means losing themselves in the wild and poisonous wastes of Earth, somehow finding allies, and perhaps discovering what hope may yet remain for humanity's home world.

Yup, sounds like a Michael Bay project to me, and I just might have to pick up Wesley Chu's novel when it hits shelves next month. Bay and Paramount have recently been hiring all the writers to help expand the TRANSFORMERS movie universe, and the director is currently filming for his Benghazi drama 13 HOURS starring James Badge Dale, John Krasinski, Toby Stephens and Max Martini.