LAS VEGAS ― Michael Bay, a Hollywood director who has directed a number of blockbusters including the Transformers series, apologized on Tuesday for walking off the stage during an event for Samsung Electronics at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

“Wow! I just embarrassed myself at CES. I was about to speak for Samsung for this awesome curved 105-inch UHD TV. I got so excited to talk, that I skipped over the exec vice president’s intro line and then the teleprompter got lost. Then the prompter went up and down, then I walked off. I guess live shows aren’t my thing,” he said via his official website.

He added that he does not usually lend his name to products, but that this one from Samsung was “just stellar.”

At the event, Bay was set to speak about Samsung Electronics’ curved ultra-high definition TVs, which were featuring his movies on their screens.

Midway through the speech about how his movies create visual worlds beyond people’s ordinary life experiences, Bay was rattled by a glitch in the teleprompter he was reading from and flubbed his lines.

Despite efforts from the Samsung staff to get Bay to continue, he eventually made a quick exit after saying he couldn’t go on.

“Samsung is unlikely to take any action, although the company will be quite upset,” said one source close to the electronics maker.

Some in the promotion industry said the situation actually may not be all bad, since the event received much publicity, with tech-related bloggers and the media reporting on the incident.

“Any publicity is good publicity,” said one industry watcher who declined to be identified. “Besides, there was really nothing much to see at this year’s CES, so this made headlines.”

By Park Hyong-ki and Kim Young-won 

(hkp@heraldcorp.com)

(wone0102@heraldcorp.com)