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

Roberto Orci has answered another round of fan’s ques­tions over at TFW2005 — answers are often vague, cryp­tic or one-liners, but a num­ber of answers are inter­est­ing. The new set of answers start around page 226 of the thread (all Orci posts — need to be logged in).

Some of the high­lights are listed below, as col­lated by TLAMB:

Will Barricade’s dis­ap­pear­ance be explained in ROTF?
Explained is a very spe­cific kinda word… implied may be more like it

Will you guys seri­ously rethink about stay­ing on?
Time for fresh blood!

Just to be clear, what is your rea­son for not writ­ing it? If the other main play­ers comes back and they don’t see a need for fresh blood, then why would you?
Not clear who is com­ing back yet, but the main rea­son we would move on is because we risk get­ting stale and com­fort­able. If you only sing one song for too long, you miss the oppor­tu­nity to sing news songs. We’ll see.

who thought of the name for the movie? you, michael bay, alex, or some­one else?
Alex.

how many fans do you think saw past Michael’s “no Mega­tron” announce­ment? And sec­ond, is he aware that his com­ment about Megs only appear­ing in a flash­back kind of con­tra­dicts Hugo Weaving’s hint that the Allspark shard has some­thing to do with Megatron’s res­ur­rec­tion?
god love him

Did the fallen enslave the Egyp­tians to build the pyra­mids (which actu­ally are space bridges)?
Hmm. Get­ting warm

Did the Egyp­tians seal the fallen within his own design?
Also very warm but not quite.

Did you ever intend for Black­out and Brawl to speak?
Yes.

Would you con­sider a giant bat­tle in the Grand Canyon?
We actu­ally had a giant bat­tle in the Grand Canyon in the very first draft of the first movie.

Is there really still time to add stuff and how much stuff can be added at this point?
On the first movie, we were re-writing dia­logue until about 2 weeks before release!

can you let us know how many Auto­bots can fly in the movie?
very few

I know very early in devel­op­ment Mike Bay said that there would be a geri­atric robot. Was it already set there and then that Jet­fre would be that bot, or did you and the writers/Bay decide later that Jet­fire would suit that type of char­ac­ter?
We decided Jet­fire would fit after the idea came up to have a geri­atric robot.

Would you con­sider this movie the “Empire Strikes Back” of the Trans­former movie line (dark, feel­ing of hope­less­ness, crazy reveal/twists/turns)?
yes

Bay men­tioned in pass­ing that about 40 bots are in the movie. Sound about right or less/more?
sounds about right

Will The Fallen have any dia­logue?
Yes.

Can you name the 3 scenes that were filmed in IMAX for­mat?
Yes.

Will Prime sur­vive the movie?
Prime’s spirit can never die.

which of the 2 movies was more dif­fi­cult to get along with the story.
Movie 1 was the hard­est thing have ever worked on. Period. Nobody could imag­ine what it was, every­one thought it was just a silly car­toon or a toy com­mer­cial, the stu­dio wasn’t sure if the robots should talk, we had to come up with a story that would attract some­one like Bay, and we had bud­getary con­straints that made it nec­es­sary to gen­er­ate a sig­nif­i­cant human story which was coun­ter­in­tu­itive to some Trans­fans. By the sec­ond movie, the par­a­digm of the fran­chise was clear.

what are your feel­ings towards the idea of Leonard Nimoy doing the voice of the Fallen?
Would love it. I actu­ally talked to him about it, given the odd coin­ci­dence that he is Michael Bay’s cousin through mar­riage, but fan out­cry has also put Welker in the running.

Grif­fin from the OCTA forums has reported back from the Aussie toy fair 2009 at the Mel­bourne Exhi­bi­tion Cen­tre, com­plete with images of new Trans­form­ers Revenge of the Fallen toys. ON dis­play were a cou­ple of mod­els from each toy class — four leg­ends toys, two scouts, three deluxe, two voy­ager, two leader (includ­ing the Jet­fire pre­views we’ve seen recently), supreme class dev­as­ta­tor, one FAB, three power bots (unpainted Dev­as­ta­tor pro­to­type and Opti­mus Prime/Jetfire com­bined form), two robot heroes and three grav­ity bots. Notably, the dev­as­ta­tor toy on show was an unsta­ble, unpainted pro­to­type that was tied up with fish­ing wire.

Over the week­end a selec­tion of new toy images turned up, includ­ing Megatron’s Leader class (TF08, via Seib­ertron), the blue bike — a pos­si­ble con­stituent part of Arcee and dubbed “Chro­mia” (TF08) after a leaked toy list and the pack­ag­ing for Long Haul, Jet­fire, Ratchet and Side­ways Fast Action bat­tler toys (The-Arker):

Aus­tralian forums OCTA have cap­tured new images of the leader class Jet­fire toy, one of the last remain­ing char­ac­ters for us to see in toy mode. The pack­ag­ing shows both robot mode and Black­bird alt mode, it also con­firms that the toy can com­bine with the leader class Opti­mus Prime.

His bio reads:

Jet­fire grew tired of war a long time ago. The reck­less ambi­tion of the Decep­ti­cons, and the sense­less vio­lence of their war sick­ened him, and so he left Cybertron to go into hid­ing. The form he even­tu­ally chose on Earth seemed appro­pri­ate for one who wished to remain unseen. He slum­bered in peace for years. Now, reawak­ened by the arrival of the war on Earth, he decides once again to enter the fight — this time on the side of the Auto­bots, and this to end it for good, what­ever the cost.

There is also another “Flight Mode” opti­mus prime toy that shows the com­bi­na­tion with Jetfire:

TF08 have posted pic­tures of the Mega­tron Robot Replica fig­ure with extra large right claw and tracks for feet:

Yes­ter­day Para­mount and Dream­works offi­cially announced that Trans­form­ers 3 shall be land­ing in cin­e­mas come Fri­day July 1st 2011, Vari­ety:

Para­mount and Dream­Works are forg­ing ahead with “Trans­form­ers 3,” dat­ing the movie for release on July 1, 2011.
It’s the first word of the three-quel, although Para­mount insid­ers down­played the impor­tance of the move.
They said the stu­dio wanted to claim the date before a com­peti­tor did, con­sid­er­ing that the 2011 sum­mer release cal­en­dar is fill­ing up.
No deals have been inked with direc­tor Michael Bay or fran­chise stars Shia LaBeouf and Megan Fox. Nor has a writer been hired for the third installment.

In response, Michael Bay has posted on his forums:

I said I was tak­ing off a year from Trans­form­ers. Para­mount made a mis­take in dat­ing Trans­form­ers 3 — they asked me on the phone — I said yes to July 4 — but for 2012 — whoops! Not 2011!!! That would mean I would have to start prep in Sep­tem­ber. No way. My brain needs a break from fight­ing robots.

Michael

Looks like some­one messed up here. No date set for now — but we know Trans­form­ers 3 is def­i­nitely planned.

Gen­Zhao at TFW2005 has posted images of the new Mud­flap Fast Action Bat­tler toy which is being sold on eBay. He is also sell­ing a Deluxe Class Skids toy (view auc­tion).

Mud­flap

View Mud­flap Auction