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