Michael Bay casts ‘Britain’s loneliest dog’ in Transformers 5

He helped launched the careers of Megan Fox, Jack Reynor and Shia LaBeouf, now Michael Bay is playing starmaker again: for a dog.

Bay, the director of Bad Boys, Pearl Harbor and Armageddon, has cast Freya, a six-year-old Staffordshire bull terrier in Transformers: The Last Knight, the fifth instalment of the action franchise, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

Freya first came to the director’s attention after the Mirror called her "Britain’s loneliest dog”. The stray, from Liverpool, was taken in by an animal shelter at six months. The pooch, who is epileptic, has been passed over by potential owners for years, despite, according to the staff at Freshfields Animal Rescue, her "sweet and friendly” nature.

Enter Bay, whose own dogs – two bullmastiffs called Bonecrusher and Grace – shuttle with him between his homes in LA and Miami. Taking pity on Freya, the director tweeted that she would not only join the cast of Transformers, but that he would find a new home for her, potentially one of his own.

Bay’s last Transformers film, Age of Extinction, was critically derided, but made more than a billion dollars at the global box office. The Transformers franchise, based on the Hasbro action figures, is one of Hollywood’s most reliable money-spinners. Age of Extinction broke box-office records in China on its release in 2014, making it the highest grossing film of that year.

Freya’s role in Transformers: The Last Knight has not yet been announced. In other news, Anthony Hopkins has also been cast.