Most mornings, Michael Bay wakes up feeling pretty good. After all, he’s finally proven to the world that he is the undisputed cinematic master of three things: using the camera to ogle curvaceous, scantily-clad women; using the camera to ogle men’s bodies in a homoerotic fashion; and incoherent robot attacks. But Bay was recently challenged on another of his pet subjects—serious drug use—with news that’s going to require quite a few scientifically impossible explosions before he recovers. Courtesy of Deadline, the world now knows that TNT has decided to redevelop the untitled drug trade drama, which it picked up to pilot last year, from Jerry Bruckheimer and Bay.
While the cable channel liked the show’s setting—the anything-goes world of the Florida drug trade in the ’70s—it seems that TNT (“BOOM! goes the desire for quality adult drama”) wants to retool the show. There’s no word on what specifically caused them not to go forward with the current pilot, but they likely decided that viewers would be bored with Bay’s desire to have a 37-minute shot of musclebound guys showering while watching 90-pound women with breast implants gyrate on a rotating stage. (Actually, the script was probably great, given that it was written by Masters Of Sex creator Michelle Ashford.)
Inspired by the 2006 documentary Cocaine Cowboys, it’s not clear whether the retooling will also mean letting go of series star Michael Stahl-David, but given that Bay has been developing this since 2008, he’s probably willing to let a few things slide if it means reasserting his drug bona fides. He’s only got so many Pain & Gains left in him, after all.