The first set pic­tures came from AICN, show­ing a crater next to an office build­ing. Then on July 10th we had our first real look at some Trans­form­ers 3 action — Prime with trailer, Bum­ble­bee, the Fer­rari, Iron­hide, Ratchet and weaponized Nascar vehicles.

Opti­mus Prime and Trailer

Weaponized Nascars, and the Autobots

Chicago Day 1 set videos

A playlist of 13 videos from the first day of shoot­ing. Includ­ing an over­head angle from zztopeu­rope depict­ing a chase scene involv­ing the Nascar vehi­cles, a Mer­cedes Benz and the Chevy Volt.

More on set images

Spot­ted by the Corvette Blog­ger near to a Trans­form­ers 3 set, the Stingray con­cept car has now gone top­less. Whether Side­swipe will play much of a role in the new movie remains to be seen.

A video was also cap­tured of the Stingray, Bumblebee’s Camaro and the new Fer­rari auto­bot dri­ving away from the scene:

The rea­sons for Megan Fox being shunned from the third movie are unknown, but it prob­a­bly revolves around a falling out with Michael Bay. For a while her replace­ment was rumored, before Nel­son con­firmed Rosie Huntington’s cast­ing on the offi­cial MB site, and much more recently, he char­ac­ter name — not Mikaela, instead, “Carly”, known to fans as Spike Witwicky’s wife in Gen­er­a­tion One Transformers.

Nel­son here…
I would like for all you S4TE fans to wel­come Rosie Hunt­ing­ton Whitely to the world of Trans­form­ers. As some of you might know, she’s the new female lead in Trans­form­ers 3. She’s worked with Michael before in his Victoria’s Secret “A Thou­sand Fan­tasies” ad.

Hunt­ing­ton was first spot­ted on set with Shia at the end of June, first reported by Just Jared. A video is also avail­able on MSN.

Then, on set again, Rosie was seen with Michael Bay and Shia in LA, this time by Com­ing Soon.

I’ve started blog­ging this movie a lit­tle late in, sorry for that. I’ve been a tad busy get­ting mar­ried and so on. Where shall we begin? Prin­ci­ple pho­tog­ra­phy for the third Trans­form­ers movie started at the end of May, with a rumored bud­get of $200m. The Trans­form­ers 3 release date is cur­rently set to July 1st, 2011, likely to be in 3D — but that card­board cut-out con­verted 3D rather than an Avatar immer­sive 3D. A change from the pre­vi­ous two movies, Orci and Kurtz­man step out, and Ehren Kruger takes cen­tre stage as writer of the third part in the soon to be tril­ogy. As a tril­ogy, accord­ing to Bay, this will be the final part, “it really ends”.

Shoot­ing Locations

Shoot­ing in Wash­ing­ton DC, Chicago, Detroit and Moscow. Pos­si­bly also in Africa, China and Texas.

Plot

In inter­views, the film mak­ers have promised to include more char­ac­ter devel­op­ment and solid sto­ry­telling, parts of TF2 severely lacked in these depart­ments. Rather than all out robot car­nage, Michael Bay says this movie is shap­ing up to have a bit of mys­tery; rumors sug­gest that it’ll revolve around a Trans­form­ers link hid­den in the USA/USSR space race, involv­ing Sound­wave. Mean­while, Sam is grow­ing up and mov­ing on.

Cast­ing

The big story, Megan Fox is out, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley is in — but not as Mikaela, her char­ac­ter is called Carly. New­com­ers also include Frances McDor­mand, John Malkovich and Alan Tudyk.

Shia LaBeouf — Sam Witwicky
Josh Duhamel — Cap­tain Lennox
Tyrese Gib­son — Mas­ter Sergeant Epps
Rosie Huntington-Whiteley — Carly
John Tur­turro — Agent Sim­mons
John Malkovich — Sam’s boss
Frances McDor­mand — National Intel­li­gence Direc­tor
Patrick Dempsey — Carly’s boss
Alan Tudyk

Trans­form­ers line up

Auto­bots
Opti­mus Prime
Bum­ble­bee –2011 Chevy Camaro
Ratchet — 2009 Hum­mer H3
Iron­hide — 2007 GMC Top­kick C4500
Skids — 2011 Chevy Sparks
Mud­flap — 2011 Chevy Sparks
Side­swipe — 2012 Chevy Corvette Centennial

Decep­ti­cons
Shock­wave
Mega­tron
Starscream — F-22 Rap­tor
Sound­wave — Satel­lite and Cybertron­ian jet

Unknown cars spot­ted on set include a Fer­rari 458 Italia and a blue 2011 Mer­cedes Benz E350, believed to be auto­bots. Three Nascar auto­mo­biles and a Chevy Tahoe vehi­cle have also been spot­ted, believed to be decepticons.

Thread­less have posted an awe­some new Decep­ti­con T-shirt,

Post­ing on the Don Mur­phy forums, Roberto Orci has con­firmed that nei­ther he nor Alex Kurtz­man will be return­ing for the third episode in the Trans­form­ers tril­ogy. Ehren Kruger (The Ring, Scream 3, Trans­form­ers Revenge of the Fallen) is tak­ing over from the pair.

So Bob and Alex is it true. you wont be involved this time round.
It’s true.

Sorry to hear that Roberto, really I am. Are we in good hands with Mr. Kruger? Does he know his Trans­form­ers?
He does. He really did his home­work. He’s awesome.

Spec­u­lated as early as Decem­ber 2008, and more solidly in March this year, we heard a June/July 2011 release date for Trans­form­ers 3 was on the cards. How­ever, Michael Bay rebutted these remarks, sug­gest­ing he wanted a year off from mechan­i­cal beasts to work on some­thing a lit­tle different.

How­ever, Bay has now con­firmed via his blog that Trans­form­ers 3 will hit the­aters in July 2011. He also left a mes­sage for Megan Fox,

Well its offi­cial: We have a great Trans­form­ers 3 story. The release date is now July 1st 2011. Not 2012.

Today is Day One. This morn­ing started with an ILM meet­ing for five hours in San Fran­cisco. Cur­rently I’m fly­ing with writer Ehren Kruger to Rhode Island to talk to Has­bro about new characters.

P.S. Megan Fox, wel­come back. I promise no alien robots will harm you in any way dur­ing the pro­duc­tion of this motion pic­ture. Please con­sult your Physi­cian when work­ing under my direc­tion because some side effects can occur, such as mild dizzi­ness, intense nau­sea, sui­ci­dal ten­den­cies, depres­sion, minor chest hair growth, ran­dom inter­nal hem­or­rhag­ing and inabil­ity to sleep. As some direc­tors may be haz­ardous to your health, please con­sult your Doc­tor to deter­mine if this is right for you.

Pain and Gain is right after shoot­ing of Trans 3.

They’re sell­ing the 17 foot Bum­ble­bee model, at auc­tion it is expected to fetch up to $80,000. Along­side him will be a num­ber of Megan Fox out­fits and over 100 props from the Trans­form­ers movies. Bids can be made over the inter­net or phone via Pro­files in His­tory.

Auc­tion­eer Pro­files in His­tory said it expected the 3,200 pound (1.45 ton) Hero Bum­ble­bee robot from the first movie in 2007 to fetch $60,000 to $80,000 at the Oct 8–9 auction.

The motor­cy­cle cos­tume worn by Fox as Mikaela Banes in the block­buster 2009 sequel “Trans­form­ers: Revenge of the Fallen”, along with her shorts and tank top, have an esti­mate of $3,000 to $5,000.

Joe Mad­dalena, pres­i­dent of Pro­files in His­tory, said any­thing worn by Fox was in great demand by collectors.

“‘Trans­form­ers’ made her a star and I expect her cos­tumes to per­form very well at auc­tion. The 17-foot Bum­ble­bee robot speaks for itself … it’s such an amaz­ing spec­ta­cle and a pop cul­ture icon that I expect bid­ders to go crazy,” Mad­dalena said.

Bids can be placed in per­son at the auc­tion in Cal­abasas, out­side Los Ange­les, by phone or live on the Internet.