Not really, but sort of. Nikki Finke, who is one of the most in-the-know entertainment/industry gossips in Hollywood, is claiming that Megan Fox’s option for Transformers 3 was not picked up. Meaning that had Michael Bay wanted Megan Fox for the third movie, she would have been contractually obligated to do it, but if Bay was all “No, that little bitch called me Hitler” then “her option isn’t picked up.” Finke is calling this one a firing too, and she points to Megan’s unceasing criticism of Michael Bay as the main culprit.

I’ve just learned that Paramount won’t be picking up Megan Fox’s option on Transformers 3 — and that it was “ultimately” director Michael Bay’s decision. (So he gets his revenge for her remark comparing him to “Hitler”.) Right now Bay and writer Ehren Kruger et al are finishing up the script for the threequel and “giving Shia a new love interest makes more sense for the story,” an insider tells me. Bay will start casting immediately for the new female co-star. Let’s hear your suggestions, readers…

So did Megan deserve to get fired? I say yes. No actor/actress can expect to go around dissing a director and expect to work together as if nothing happened. Much less the egotistical Bay. But in Fox, he had met his match. Why, as recently as this week Megan was quoted as dissing Bay yet again.

In recent months she has shown off a more natural skin hue instead of her usual orange color — and blamed the Transformers helmer for her unhealthy tanning binge. “I had been tanning a lot so that Michael would be happy with my skin tone. Every spare moment of sun that was outside, I had to be in it,” the 24-year-old actress lamented in Allure magazine. “It’s not going to happen again because of the damage and the possible skin cancer.”

This is without doubt a huge blow to Megan’s career, already damaged by her inability to open Twentieth’s Fox Atomic film Jennifer’s Body last September. The R-rated feminist horror flick did a pathetic $6.8M weekend for a script by Juno’s Diablo Cody for a domestic total of only $16.2M and a worldwide take of just $31.5M. And talk about bad timing: right now she’s doing publicity for her role in Jonah Hex to be released June 18th. Guess what everyone will ask her?

[From Nikki Finke’s Deadline column]

After that, Finke recaps some of the notable exchanges between Megan and Bay in the neverending war of attrition. Like when Megan said Michael Bay was “like Napoleon and he wants to create this insane, infamous mad-man reputation. He wants to be like Hitler on his sets, and he is. So he’s a nightmare to work for but when you get him away from set, and he’s not in director mode, I kind of really enjoy his personality because he’s so awkward, so hopelessly awkward. He has no social skills at all. And it’s endearing to watch him. He’s vulnerable and fragile in real life and then on set he’s a tyrant.” Like the open letter three crew members sent out about Megan and how she’s “the queen of talking trailer trash and posing like a porn star” and “a thankless, classless, graceless, and… unfriendly bitch”. Michael Bay later apologized, sort of, for the letter and mumbled something about looking forward to working with her on Transformers 3. Ha!

Of course, Finke couldn’t put all of the sh-t that went down between Megan and Michael Bay. There was a lot of sh-t, for real. In my mind, Megan started it. She spent a significant amount of time during the Transformers 2 promotional tour slamming the movie in general and Michael Bay in particular, saying stuff like “But unless you’re a seasoned veteran, working with Michael Bay is not about an acting experience” and “I can’t sh-t on this movie [Transformers 2] because it did give me a career and open all these doors for me. But I don’t want to blow smoke up people’s ass. People are well aware that this is not a movie about acting.”

Now, even though I think Megan is a f-cking idiot, I have to wonder if Bay really made the right call here. Sure, she was (and is) unprofessional and dumb, but she was also one of the big draws of the franchise. What am I saying? Michael Bay could easily find some NEW pretty young thing and all of the teenage boys will be salivating for the new girl.

UPDATE: Megan wants us to know that she was NOT fired, she quit. Her rep tells People Magazine: “Megan Fox will not be starring in Transformers 3. It was her decision not to return. She wishes the franchise the best.” Oh, so it was her decision? Honestly, it could have been. It seems like the kind of moronic move Megan would make: “I’m gonna quit the franchise that made me a star and paid me millions of dollars because I don’t wanna work with Hitler. Wah.”