Trans­form­ers and ROTF writ­ers Orci and Kurtz­man have spo­ken with Scifi Wire about their work on Trans­form­ers 2. I have taken the lib­erty of sum­ma­riz­ing the inter­view with some bul­let points below:

- Both Sam and Opti­mus Prime are “tested in a very fun­da­men­tal way”.
– The theme is based on Sam leav­ing home two years later and his new respon­si­bil­i­ties.
– In search­ing for vil­lains they went back to the source mate­r­ial; comics and car­toons — “and just started look­ing for kind of the most ele­men­tal bad guy that kind of jumped off the mate­r­ial, and we found one in the Fallen.“
– Some char­ac­ters were cho­sen by Has­bro and Bay dur­ing writer’s strikes as dis­cus­sion between the film mak­ers and the film writ­ers was pro­hib­ited. Oth­ers were taken from a brief 20 page treat­ment. This was nec­es­sary to get the designs rolling.
– Orci says “Jolt” (as seen on the toy) should be named “Volt”.
– Jet­fire was in the treat­ment, whilst the goofy sure to be annoy­ing Mud­flap (Chevy Trax) was added later.
– “You’re not going to get to know them all”, with respect to pil­ing new char­ac­ters into the sec­ond movie.
– Some dis­cus­sion about Nimoy and Frank Welker voic­ing characters.

Read the full inter­view at Scifi Wire

This news seems to have hit a cou­ple of sta­tions in the last 24 hours, orig­i­nally miss-reported as Blink-182 writ­ing a track for Revenge of the Fallen. Blink-182 drum­mer is a twit­terer, and he did tweet:

Lis­ten­ing to a new ver­sion of a track I’m play­ing on for Busta Rhymes for the Trans­form­ers 2 sound­track. Shit is jammin’.

Not hugely news­wor­thy, we should get the film’s full sound­track track list­ing shortly, pos­si­bly in April.

‘Chi­naseller’ over at TFW2005 has posted a pre­vi­ously unseen Revenge of the Fallen repaint of the first movie’s Brawl toy, here be some pics, more in the orig­i­nal post:

The New Trans­form­ers Archive have posted pic­tures of:

Scout Dirt Boss
Scout Dead End
Scout Knock Out
Scout Roll­bar
Deluxe Sound­wave
Deluxe Side­swipe
Deluxe Side­ways
Deluxe Ram­page
Voy­ager Demolisher

We get an espe­cially good look at the Deluxe Ram­page toy, in alt mode and both robot modes (i.e. as a Jackhammer):

TF08 have posted their sec­ond batch of images for the week, this time show­ing Skids and Mega­tron in their boxes, along­side the new blue motor­cy­cle char­ac­ter, ‘Chro­mia’.

The packet describes Chromia’s char­ac­ter as a female friend of Iron­hide (part­ners — aka a love inter­est) with sis­ters, pre­sum­ably two given the three dif­fer­ent bikes. This char­ac­ter pro­file matches the out­line of Chro­mia given on Wikipedia based on the first gen­er­a­tion ani­mated series in the episode, “The Search for Alpha Trion.”. There appears to be no men­tion of Chro­mia com­bin­ing with any other robot/toys to form what was thought would be Arcee.

Chro­mia is tough as nails, and always spoil­ing for a fight. She’s […] friends with Iron­hide for cen­turies, and their reunion on Earth […] one of the high points of the war for both of them. Now they […] side-by-side, hunt­ing and destroy­ing Decep­ti­cons. nei­ther of […] has ever been hap­pier. The two robots make great part­ners, and […] along with her sis­ters, are an invalu­able part of the […].

As seen in the trailer:

TF08 have posted some new shots of Bar­ri­cade and Bum­ble­bee Revenge of the Fallen toys in vehi­cle mode with their weapons out. Bar­ri­cades involve­ment in the movie is largely unknown, although the car has been spot­ted on set.

This month Megan Fox appears very strik­ingly on the front cover of Empire, sport­ing an auto­bot tat­too on her left shoul­der — this is a photo-editing job, she doesn’t love robots that much.

Details on this month’s edi­tion, noth­ing too inter­est­ing on TF2 front:

The new issue of Empire is poised to hit shelves, and it’s a doozy. Our cover star is Trans­form­ers 2’s aptly-named Megan Fox, lead­ing the col­lec­tion of the hottest upcom­ing stars in Hol­ly­wood today. But that’s not all in this month’s issue.

The orig­i­nal image (via Seib­ertron):

A plot syn­op­sis and the first chap­ter of Alan Dean Foster’s Trans­form­ers novel enti­tled “Trans­form­ers: The Veiled Threat” have been posted to Del­rey Online.

The book can be pre­ordered on Ama­zon.

The descrip­tion of the book reveals the mean­ing of the NEST acronym seen on the Iron­hide toys, on the leaked call sheet and some vehi­cles on set (Hum­mers) — it sat­nds for the some­what cheesy — “Net­worked Ele­ments: Sup­port­ers and Transformers”.

Life on earth has changed for­ever as humans and their coura­geous robotic allies, the Auto­bots, must work together to pro­tect the planet from the destruc­tive forces of the evil Decep­ti­cons. At the head­quar­ters of NEST (Net­worked Ele­ments: Sup­port­ers and Trans­form­ers), tech sergeant Epps and cap­tain Lennox both guard and assist cyber­neti­cist Yoki Ishi­hara and the brood­ing Russ­ian AI genius Petr Ivanov as they explore the dif­fer­ences between organ­ics and bots. In the mean­time, all around them, alliances fray, dis­trust grows, sus­pi­cions mount, and trai­tors come out of the shadows.

Opti­mus Prime, the pow­er­ful leader of the Auto­bots who is also part of NEST, is on the defense as bat­tles flare up from Aus­tralia to Zim­babwe. But esca­lat­ing Decep­ti­con attacks will cul­mi­nate in a final con­fronta­tion from which no one–man or machine–will emerge unscathed.

Via TLAMB