10 Directors Who Could Take Over Transformers From Michael Bay

James Wan's rise from low-budget horror to blockbusters is a career path most directors can only dream of, but he's made it work thanks to his consistently solid output. Though the Saw franchise may have degraded into torture porn in his absence, his intital entry in the franchise was practically the Friday the 13th of its generation and helped revitalize the genre.

Wan repeated that success by starting the Insidious and The Conjuring franchises, before bursting onto the action movie scene with Furious 7 and is now deep into production on Aquaman.

Currently, Wan is attached to direct a potential rival to Transformers in the form of a live-action adaptation of the anime series Robotech, so clearly he already wants to take a shot at giant robots. But Wan's interests are definitely matched by his sensibilities, and Transformers could benefit from someone with his talents.

Like Gray, Wan has solidly proved his capability with car stunts on Furious 7, and being able to pull off a film that complicated in the midst of the Paul Walker tragedy makes its success even more astounding. Additionally, his experience working on restrained and grounded low-budget horror shows he knows how to mine quality out of limited production values.

With five wildly expensive Bay films, Wan could perhaps figure out a way to make a more cost-effective Transformers film without skimping on the fun.