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.

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.

Nel­son has left a brief update on Michael Bay’s blog; Bay has met with Steven Spiel­berg and Ehren Kruger to dis­cuss Trans­form­ers 3–an announce­ment shortly? We’ll prob­a­bly have to sweat it out a bit more first.

* He will be meet­ing later this week with Steven Spiel­berg, and Ehren Kruger to dis­cuss ideas for Trans­form­ers 3. By the end of the week he should have an idea if Trans­form­ers 3 will hit your local cine­plex in the sum­mer of 2011 or 2012.
* In the mean­time “Pain & Gain” is look­ing very pos­si­ble as is…
* …Bad Boys 3. Either film com­ing to a the­ater near you before or after Trans­form­ers 3.

Another round up of the inter­views, press arti­cles and what­not that keep­ing pop­ping up here there and everywhere.

Michael Bay’s Film Weekly Podcast

This inter­view comes from The Guardian’s “Film weekly” inter­view with Michael Bay and was posted to the offi­cial Michael Bay site.

Bay is not quit­ting Transformers

Some inter­views recently spun the “I’m tak­ing a break” stance Michael Bay has on Trans­form­ers 3 to give the impres­sion he was quit­ting the fran­chise alto­gether. This is not the case and in all like­li­hoods Michael Bay shall direct Trans­form­ers 3, due for release in 2012.

GM pro­vided 67 vehi­cles for Trans­form­ers 2

USA Today have a short arti­cle on the Transformers/GM rela­tion­ship and an inter­view with Michael Bay.

“They were respon­si­ble for build­ing the cars, and I was try­ing to get my check because we built the cars, fronted them the money, and they were late on pay­ing us,” Bay says. “I was like, ‘We bet­ter get our check fast before they go bankrupt.’

Chevy won’t reveal what it cost to pro­vide cars, but spokesman Steve Janisse says 67 vehi­cles were used, and 52 of those were “non-salable,” spe­cially built pro­to­types used for test­ing, engi­neer­ing and display.

[…]

Bay says the cars them­selves become like celebri­ties, some­thing he wit­nessed while shoot­ing in a remote part of the Mid­dle East. “The money they spend is pen­nies for the amount of good­will. Bum­ble­bee is one of the most famous cars in the world,” the direc­tor says. “Lit­er­ally, we’re in this poor lit­tle town in Jor­dan, and all these kids sur­rounded (the car). They all knew Bumblebee’s name.”

Nascar 18 wrapped in M&Ms and autobots

Num­ber 18 has been cov­ered in an M&Ms and Trans­form­ers themed coat — full gallery avail­able at Joe Gibbs.

Shia has “The Touch”

Shia per­forms a ren­di­tion of Stan Bush’s “The Touch” to much amuse­ment and pain.

Obama in Revenge of the Fallen

The movie in some way includes Obama, to which Bay com­ments, via Dig­i­tal Spy,

Bay said: “The Obama thing? I met him in an air­port where he was car­ry­ing his bag by him­self and we talked about movies and appar­ently he likes my movies. So I fig­ured we’ll just put him in.”

The direc­tor joked that he was able to include the up-to-date ref­er­ence because he had only com­pleted mak­ing the film last Wednes­day [June 10th].

Michael Bay in Gui­ness Book of World Records

Michael Bay is now in the record books for the largest explo­sion filmed whilst actors are present. It was shot in New Mex­ico. The NZ Her­ald, from whence this news came, offer up and expan­sive overview of Trans­form­ers 2 and have some tid­bit inter­view com­ments from Megan Fox and Shia as well,

“If Michael Bay can make me look that good in shorts, then I don’t mind if peo­ple think I’m being exploited. And it gives me an advan­tage because even if I do a mediocre per­for­mance, peo­ple don’t expect any­thing of me, so they’re impressed.” And inci­den­tally, although she is adorned with tat­toos, claims to be bisex­ual, and does her best to come across as “dan­ger­ous and dark” à la Jolie, she insists it is not cal­cu­lated. “It’s more of a curse than a bless­ing to look like Angelina,” she says, straight-faced. “Seri­ously, there are a lot of films I’ve had to pass on because I don’t want peo­ple to think I’m try­ing to emu­late her.” (Appar­ently she was offered the next Tomb Raider but turned it down for this rea­son.) As for Lebeouf, an edgy lead­ing man and an exam­ple of the core audi­ence of a film like this, says, “Trans­form­ers is escapism in the same way Star Wars was for its gen­er­a­tion. If you want magic tricks, theme park rides, the roller coaster vibe, Trans­form­ers is for you.“

Film Jour­nal talks with Orci and Kurtzman

After recov­er­ing from the Star Trek press tour, Orci and Kurtz­man answered some ques­tions from the folks at Film Jour­nal. Points include the story’s emo­tional core, the strike and the inspi­ra­tion for the sequel.

“For us, the action always emerges from the char­ac­ters; the audi­ence tunes out ran­dom action scenes that don’t move the plot for­ward or take the char­ac­ters in some new direc­tion,” Kurtz­man says. “So in Revenge of the Fallen, there are sev­eral sequences that we pitched to Michael in detail as part of the char­ac­ters’ sto­ries and he ended up shoot­ing them almost exactly as we pitched them. Of course, he also comes up with great ways to embell­ish the sequences and no one is bet­ter at that than he is.”

That infor­ma­tion will come in handy as the duo makes their long-planned tran­si­tion to direct­ing. “The plan is to find the right film for us to direct in the next cou­ple of years,” Orci reveals. “We’re happy being the guys that write the words, but we want to try every­thing. It’s pos­si­ble that we’ll each direct our own projects, but we might be too jeal­ous of what the other is doing and so we’ll both have to do it!” While nei­ther claims to have a dream project right now, there is one fran­chise that Orci says he’s hop­ing to see real­ized on the big screen some­day. “I’d love to see [Nintendo’s] The Leg­end of Zelda done right.”

Film Jour­nal

Video game pre­views and walkthroughs

More Revenge of the Fallen video game pre­views have sur­faced at Game Trail­ers, includ­ing Art Direc­tor and Pro­ducer inter­views, a Side­ways and Dev­as­ta­tor walk­through and an Opti­mus Prime down­town walk­through. Fol­low­ing these there are tow YouTube videos, includ­ing the open­ing scenes and a Break­away train­ing routine.

Human Alliance video review

Not strictly press, but not really big enough for its own post, another Human Alliance video review:

Read the rest of this entry »

As expected, the cast of Trans­form­ers 2 are appear­ing left, right and cen­ter as part of the Revenge of the Fallen press explo­sion. Here’s a quick round up of the arti­cles and fea­tures we know about.

Megan Fox and Opti­mus Prime in EW

”If I’m still mak­ing Trans­form­ers five years from now, I might not be so überex­cited. But there’s noth­ing spe­cific that I need to accom­plish. I just want to still be working.”

Warn­ing: do not try get­ting your hair caught up in barbed wire at home.

”Peo­ple are well aware that [Trans­form­ers] is not a movie about act­ing. And once you real­ize that, it becomes almost fun because you can be in the moment and go, ‘All right, I know that when he calls Action! I’m either going to be run­ning or scream­ing, or both.”’

Trans­form­ers turned you into an overnight star. Look­ing back, how do you feel about the movie?
I’m ter­ri­ble in it. It’s my first real movie and it’s not hon­est and not real­is­tic. The movie wasn’t bad, I just wasn’t proud about what I did.

What was it like the first time you worked with him?
I was actu­ally an extra on Bad Boys II [in 2003]. There’s a club scene, and I was one of the club kids. I was in a stars-and-stripes bikini and a cow­boy hat, danc­ing under a waterfall.

You’re a big­ger star now than when you did the first Trans­form­ers. Did they beef up your role in the sequel?
The humans are still sec­ondary to the robots because it’s a movie about robots. I feel like the part is ade­quate. I feel like we do some­thing that’s watch­able on our end and then ILM makes it phenomenal.

You don’t sound con­vinced that this is the great­est movie on earth.
It’s not try­ing to be the great­est movie on earth. It’s going to be the best action movie of the sum­mer. Hands down, it will win that. But it’s not try­ing to be a Golden Globe-nominated film. It’s a badass pop­corn sum­mer movie.

You up for a third Trans­form­ers?
Sure. I mean, I can’t s— on this movie because it did give me a career and open all these doors for me. But I don’t want to blow smoke up people’s ass. Peo­ple are well aware that this is not a movie about act­ing. And once you real­ize that, it becomes almost fun because you can be in the moment and go, ”All right, I know that when he calls Action! I’m either going to be run­ning or scream­ing, or both.”

Shia and Megan talk tril­ogy with MTV

Megan Fox on Trans­form­ers 3

“I’m really happy to have been a part of these films, obvi­ously, and if they wanted me to come back for a third one, I would. I owe them,” she laughed. “I owe them my career, really.”

Roberto Orci on Trans­form­ers 3

“I’d like to see some ver­sion of Gal­va­tron,” said Roberto Orci.. “I would like to see Uni­cron, too, and really any­thing that ends in the word ‘ron.’ Dinobots! I think, even­tu­ally, the Dinobots are going to have to happen.”

“It’s totally pos­si­ble that, just for the ben­e­fit of ‘Trans­form­ers’ to stay cool and awe­some, we should have to let new peo­ple come in and do it,” Kurtz­man said.

Shia on Trans­form­ers 3

“I don’t think [we’ll make ‘Trans­form­ers 3′] right away, but I wouldn’t kill it either,” LaBeouf explained, say­ing that just like Michael Bay, all the stars need a break from the giant robot fran­chise. “I don’t think we’re going to do one any­time soon. I think we all need a break from each other and a break from the project. We just need to col­lect our­selves and come back to it. They’re hard to make, man.”

Shia talks Revenge of the Fallen video game

“I’m a gamer. Always have been — always will be. This one looks a-w-e-s-o-m-e! ”

Read the rest of this entry »

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.