According to The Wrap, Paramount has set Michael Bay to direct Time Salvager, an adaptation of the upcoming Wesley Chu science fiction adventure novel.  Lorenzo di Bonaventura and Mark Vahradian will produce, with an eye towards it being Bay’s next project after he completes work on the currently-filming 13 Hours (2016), his Benghazi action thriller.

Courtesy of the book’s synopsis…

Time Salvager: a fast-paced time travel adventure from Wesley Chu, the award-winning author of The Lives of Tao.

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.

Bay has rightfully caught a lot of flack over the years, specifically for his Transformers sequels, but I still enjoy a few of his older efforts and felt that Pain & Gain was his best film to date.  Here’s hoping he can tap back into that mojo a bit with both 13 Hours and Time Salvager to give audiences something worth watching again.

In addition to his own directorial line-up, Bay is also producing the currently-filming Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Half Shell (2016) and new installments in the Friday the 13th and Purge franchises.  He is also developing a fifth installment in the Transformers franchise, as well as various spin-offs, none of which he intends to direct.

Wesley Chu’s Time Salvager hits store shelves this summer on July 7th.