Michael Bay recently screened his cut of Trans­form­ers 2, “Revenge of the Fallen” to exec­u­tive pro­ducer Steven Spiel­berg in an empty Sony the­ater. He has reported back via his Shoot for the Edit forums stat­ing that Speil­berg called it “Awe­some” and pos­si­bly Bay’s best. Work on a new trailer has just fin­ished and it is set to appear before the new Wolver­ine movie, due for release on May 1st in the US.

Steven Spiel­berg sat next to me in a big 100 per­son the­ater at Sony today. There were 98 empty seats. The lights came up after we just watched my cut of Revenge of the Fallen. He turned to me and said “It’s awe­some”. He felt this movie was bet­ter than the first — and prob­a­bly my best, who knows — at this point in a movie you start to lose your objec­tiv­ity. I just hope the fans like it. I’m going to start putting it in front of audi­ences in a few weeks — no you are not invited, yet.

We have 60 days left. Let me tell you it will be a race to fin­ish. It’s 12 at night and we are still work­ing here in the edit room. Every­one at ILM and DD are killing them­selves right now, they are doing a stel­lar job on the effects. We also just fin­ished our trailer which is com­ing out with Wolver­ine. Talk to you soon.

Michael

An adap­ta­tion of Trans­form­ers: Revenge of the Fallen is being cre­ated in comic for­mat, with issues released weekly. The first of four is set to appear on May 20th for ~$3.99. Things from Another World have the comic avail­able for pre-order and offers up some details and art­work from the comic (pos­si­bly one of the cov­ers). The comics shall pre­sum­ably delve into the movie’s sto­ry­line, no doubt spoil­ing the entire plot before the movie is released.

By: Simon Fur­man, Jon-Davis Hunt, Josh Nizzi, Photo
Type: Comics
Gen­res: Science-Fiction
Pub­lisher: IDW Pub­lish­ing
Pub. Date: May 20, 2009
Avail­abil­ity: Pre-Order
UPC: 82771400064100111

The offi­cial adap­ta­tion of Trans­form­ers: Revenge of the Fallen picks up directly where the Des­tiny movie pre­quels leave off with this weekly series-the TRANSFORMERS’ bru­tal war con­tin­ues on Earth as the noble AUTOBOTS work with their human allies to end the threat of the treach­er­ous DECEPTICONS.

Early in Feb­ru­ary Michael Bay reported that his cur­rent Revenge of the Fallen edit sat some­where over the two hour mark. Bay has since updated this fig­ure, stat­ing that the new movie shall be four min­utes longer than the orig­i­nal and that this run time will not be changed. The orig­i­nal lasts 143 min­utes which puts Trans­form­ers 2 at 147 min­utes in total:

“It’s four min­utes longer than the last one. […] So, go fig­ure it out.”

Bay goes on to elaborate,

“I don’t ever talk (to exec­u­tives) about run times. […] Stu­dios always ask, ‘What’s the run time?’ And I’m like ‘If you enjoy the movie, do you care?’”

We’ve pre­vi­ously seen the new Mix­mas­ter in Alt Mode and very small in Robot Mode. Now we have the final piece of the puz­zle — Mix­mas­ter in his glo­ri­ous robot mode cour­tesy of TF08:

Update: Despite hav­ing this account con­firmed by the Shoot for the Edit web­mas­ter, it seems this account is indeed fake and has been sus­pended! Post­ing on his forum:

“Twit­ter. Never. What a waste of time”

Orig­i­nal post:
For a while a fake Michael bay has been post­ing to twit­ter, it appears that the real Michael Bay has taken this to heart and signed up,

“I am tired of impos­tors on Twit­ter so I fig­ured you could get the real bay direct from now on.”

His lat­est tweets include:

Accepted the Show­est direc­tor of the year award last night. — Mike

Work­ing in the indus­try means even week­ends are apt for mak­ing robots inter­act — Mike

Is excited for what Jackie Earle Haley will bring to the fran­chise. — Mike

“Some big news is com­ing down the pipeline, can’t say what or when but be excited.”

I’m not sure why he signs off each tweet with ‘Mike’, but it’s good to get some reg­u­lar bite-sized news from the man him­self. This account has been con­firmed as offi­cial, althought the Megan Fox and Shia accounts that Bay is fol­low­ing have been con­firmed fake, so be warned.

Fol­low Michael Bay on Twit­ter
Fol­low us on Twitter

TF08 have posted pic­tures of the Leader Class Mega­tron pack­ag­ing, com­plete with bio and two pic­tures of toys that are also avail­able — these being Mix­mas­ter in robot mode and The Fallen:

These took a short while com­ing but we have some at last! Alright — we have Rav­age, Starscream, The Fallen, The Twins, Mega­tron, Iron­hide, Ratchet and the most awe­some look­ing Sideswipe!

Rav­age

Starscream

The Fallen

Twins — Skids and Mudflaps

Dev­as­ta­tor

Side­swipe

Mega­tron

Iron­hide

Ratchet

The final issue of the Defi­ance comic, a pre­quel to the new movie — bridg­ing the gap between the two, has hit Amer­i­can news stands. The issue goes into some depth about the ori­gins of The Fallen, the power of the AllSpark, how to restore that power and the first cybertro­n­i­ans cre­ated using the AllSpark. Con­tinue read­ing if you are open to the plot spoilers…

As sum­marised by Seibertron:

The Fallen and his “broth­ers” were born on a ter­res­trial world where the Allspark was located. They learned that the ener­gies of the Allspark were lim­ited, and could only be restored through the destruc­tion of a sun. In order to help them, the Allspark cre­ated work­ers who would go out and search for suns that would help to fuel the Allspark. These work­ers were the first Cybertro­n­i­ans. (Among which is Jetfire.)

The Fallen decides he wants the power of the Allspark for him­self, but was trapped in his sar­coph­a­gus (the ancient relic dis­cov­ered by the Trans­form­ers in Defi­ance #1), where he is to remain until the sun har­vester is located and reac­ti­vated once more. [We’ve seen Dev­as­ta­tor do some­thing like this in the col­or­ing book]