Wreck­ers

Until now, the weaponized Nascars have been dubbed stun­ti­cons, omni­bots and rally­bots, all three names have been rejected by MichaelBay.com’s Nel­son. Nel­son has since con­firmed that they are actu­ally called Wreck­ers. Wikipedia pro­vides some back­ground on the characters:

The Wreck­ers are a sub-team of Auto­bots in the fic­tional Trans­form­ers Uni­verse, func­tion­ing essen­tially as a com­mando unit.

Red Faced

Film­ing last week on Michi­gan Avenue, Chicago, the Trans­form­ers 3 crew were using more card­board head cut outs. This time, lowfatoreo’s YouTube video has high­lighted a new char­ac­ter, red faced and angry look­ing this could be the robot mode of the Fer­rari, Roll­bar or a Wrecker, my per­sonal guess is that it’s the red Wrecker. Hat tip to Trans­form­ers Live for pick­ing this one out.

Ein­stein, Mercedes

Until now it’s been pre­sumed that the Mer­cedes was the lat­est incar­na­tion of Jolt, how­ever Nel­son has dis­pelled these rumors on the offi­cial Michael Bay site, point­ing out instead that the Mer­cedes E550 is the alt mode of the Ein­stein looka­like robot, that is called Q (“like in James Bond”).

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.

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.

With the gen­eral release of Trans­form­ers 2, it’s time to open up the floor to com­ments and find out what you guys thought of it. We’ve already shared our thoughts in our exten­sive review: Movie Chron­i­cles Trans­form­ers 2 review.

Some ques­tions to prompt debate

Did the new robots add to the film?
Which was the best new char­ac­ter?
Which was the worst?
What would you have done dif­fer­ent?
Did the movie fly by too quickly or did you think it was too long?
Were Skids and Mud­flap annoy­ing or gen­uinely funny?
What was your biggest dis­ap­point­ment or favorite part?

With the world­wide gen­eral release of Revenge of the Fallen, comes the much antic­i­pated LA Pre­mière event at the Fox The­atre at the Los Ange­les Film Festival.

18 Videos from the première

This is a YouTube video playlists that fea­tures 18 videos from the Revenge of the Fallen LA première

Pic­tures from première

The huge Trans­form­ers 2 ad that now cov­ers the Luxor hotel in Las Vegas has been com­pleted in time for the movie’s release. Here’s what the final prod­uct looks like:

Trans­form­ers 2 sell­ing out

Hun­dreds of tomor­row night’s mid­night show times for Trans­form­ers: Revenge of the Fallen (debut­ing June 24 at 12:01 a.m.) are already sold out across the coun­try. A few facts from Fan­dango below:

* Sold-out mid­night show times (on Tues­day night/Wednesday morn­ing) can be found all across the U.S.A., in cities such as New York, San Fran­cisco, Wash­ing­ton, D.C., Chicago, Los Ange­les, Philadel­phia, Albu­querque, Den­ver, Hous­ton, Nashville, Orlando, Col­orado Springs, Tulsa, Fresno and Buford, Geor­gia.
* Exhibitors are con­tin­u­ing to add 3:45 a.m. or 4:00 a.m. show times on Wednes­day morn­ing to meet the fan demand.
* Cur­rently, the film is sell­ing twice as many tick­ets on Fan­dango as the orig­i­nal Trans­form­ers sold at the same point in that film’s sales cycle (two days before release date).
* The movie cur­rently rep­re­sents 87% of today’s ticket sales
* And as we noted yes­ter­day, TF 2 show­ings at 500+ the­aters in China are sold out 1.5 weeks in advanced.

Time in Moscow

Back from Moscow. Fresh from a visit to the for­mer KGB, with sec­ond in com­mand. He told me in his office I’m one of 10 American’s, one being a Pres­i­dent, to ever be allowed inside what is now called the FSB. The only rea­son was he heard I was in town and he is a fan of my films.

Last night with my crew I saw the IMAX ver­sion. Once you get used to the giant for­mat and your eyes adjust, it’s an awe­some expe­ri­ence. I have been wait­ing until the film was final to judge, and I’m really pleased. You have to make a point to see it this way — It could be the very best way to see Transformers.

C’mon guys crit­ics? Give me a break. Do you all have short term mem­ory? They killed the first one, and it still became a world-wide smash. I made this for the you, the audience!

Michael

Using Obama

A con­voy of yel­low and black striped cars led the way through Beijing’s streets as fans cel­e­brated the release of Revenge of the Fallen. The event was orga­nized by Autohome.