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Maybe this will provide a brief respite from the onslaught of Transformers movies that are inevitably coming our way.
TheWrap has learned that Michael Bay is attached to direct a film adaptation of Wesley Chu’s science fiction novel Time Salvager for Paramount, although there's no official timetable set for when filming would begin. Here's the official synopsis of the book 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.
Sounds like it has some hints of Looper in there, but with a love story angle that could easily be the film's emotional hook. Bay seems to have a thing for time travel right now, having recently produced Project Almanac. The director is currently working on a Benghazi film called 13 Hours, and he's rumored to be directing Transformers 5 as soon as that wraps up, so there's the possibility this will be his next project after that. Time Salvager (the book) hits shelves on July 7th.
