It seems like news about Michael Bay has been coming in fast and strong in the past few days. Earlier this week, we heard that Bay was reconsidering his position on declining to return to the Transformers franchise for a fourth film, with none other than Steven Spielberg fully backing his possible return.

Then yesterday, we got some great possible casting news in the form of Dwayne Johnson and Mark Wahlberg being eyed for Bay’s next and smaller-budgeted film, Pain and Gain.

Now comes the (in my eyes) fantastic news that Bay is in final talks to direct a fourth Transformers film for Paramount, via Vulture, and it sounds like the key is tied up in Pain and Gain.

Bay’s next film has been a passion project that he’s been developing since 2001, and he’d first been intending to direct it in between the second and third Transformers films. Since that didn’t happen, he’s now shifting from the $195m. budget of his last film, Transformers: Dark of the Moon, to a more moderate budget of $20m. for Pain and Gain, and it looks like Paramount are essentially going to greenlight and fund the smaller film for Bay if he’ll return to direct the fourth Transformers film for them.

As Spielberg recently commented, Bay really does seem to have a secret formula with his films, especially when you consider the ever-increasing box office performances of each of the successive Transformers films, and I’m already getting excited about seeing the robots return to the big screen under his direction.

The plan is to get Pain and Gain underway as early as the spring of next year, and whilst he’s shooting that, Bay will begin pre-production with art development and visual effects tests simultaneously, with an eye to start filming the fourth Transformers instalment by the winter of 2012.

Naturally plot details are being kept under wraps, but it sounds as though the next film is looking to hark back to some of the original characters and bring them to life on the big screen.

““Regular people might not care about bringing out a character like Sentinel Prime,” says one of our insiders, referring to the little-known character who played a major part in last summer’s Transformers: Dark of the Moon, “But believe me, fans of the series cared.””

No news yet on who’s going to be penning the script, but I’m hoping we’ll see the return of Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, who co-wrote the first two films, alongside Ehren Kruger, who co-wrote the second film and took the third film on alone.

I thought Dark of the Moon was an absolutely brilliant film this year, with Bay really out-doing himself after what I think many fans thought was a bit of a drop-off in calibre in Revenge of the Fallen, so I’ve got high hopes for a fourth film, and every reason to expect Bay will fulfil every one of them.

One of the next big questions will of course be whether Shia LaBeouf, who had previously announced like Bay that he wouldn’t return for a fourth film, will reconsider his original position, and if not, then the studio will no doubt begin the search as soon as possible for who will fill his place in the lead.

It’s still early days yet, but it sounds like the deal is pretty close to closing for both Pain and Gain and the fourth Transformers film, and an official announcement is expected to come as early as next week. Keep your fingers crossed, because I think Bay has got two brilliant films coming for us in the next few years. More as we get it.