The Trans­form­ers 2 viral site, The Real Eff­ing Deal, has updated with new robot sight­ings, videos and news sto­ries — includ­ing a Leo Spitz video rant at Robo Warrior.

Down­load video collection

Down­load a zip file of four Leo Spitz videos from The Real Eff­ing Deal, three are Ramon Rodriguez and the fourth shows what looks like Starscream dart­ing in front of some Fireworks.

Down­load the Real Eff­ing Deal videos (18mb)

Robot seen in Japan

“Exclu­sive: It is Japan and all but”

Another TRED-head who’d like to remain anony­mous just sent us this link. We’re the FIRST on the net to break this story.

Now we all know the Land of the Ris­ing Sun is known for robots of all stripes — small to eff­ing huge — so spot­ting a bot in Japan is nor­mally no big deal. But this one’s LOOSE. And HIDING. And it looks more advanced than any Japan­ese robot I’ve ever seen. I’m start­ing to cor­re­late all the data we’ve been get­ting for the last few days and all I can say is, this is NOT good, peo­ple. They’re land­ing, spread­ing all over the world, and lying in wait for…something. Why are they here? Either they want our resources, they want to enslave us, they want to use our planet as their new homeworld…or maybe some­thing else. We’ll prob­a­bly never know until it’s way too late.

Robot on the Autobahn

Robot­ics Gone Wild

I don’t know what “gespinnt” means, but he’s right, the “part” was eff­ing huge!! It looks to me like that car actu­ally TURNED INTO a bot. The physics just seem…impossible. Unless the Ger­mans have invented some kind of mor­ph­ing technology…or maybe learned it from aliens. Either way, here’s what wor­ries me: if robots can hide IN PLAIN SIGHT, we’ll NEVER see it com­ing! We could all be sur­rounded by bots right now. What if this com­puter I’m using sud­denly trans­forms into a killer cyber-organism because it doesn’t like what I’m typ­ing??? Yeeesh!

Robot climb­ing tower

That is not a gorilla

A dios mia!!! TRED-heads, you need to check out this video. Watch the upper right for what looks like a grande eff­ing robot! Aus­tralia, Peru, now SPAIN! Either there’s one bot-like entity on a world-wide tour, or there are LOTS of them hid­ing out eff­ing EVERYWHERE.
Dudes, seri­ously. I’ve never seen any­thing like this before. Either someone’s yank­ing our chain here, or we’ve got giant robots — pos­si­bly giant ALIEN robots — appear­ing all over the eff­ing globe. I sug­gest you go back and bone up on your “How to Sur­vive a Robot Upris­ing” book, the one we men­tioned a few months ago right here on TRED.

And, yo, if you see some­thing else like this, send it to us ASAP (and not to ANYONE else, if you know what I mean).

Para­mount Pic­tures have launched their next Revenge of the Fallen pro­mo­tional tool — an aug­mented real­ity tool that uses a plu­gin and your web­cam to super­im­pose Opti­mus Prime’s hel­met on your head, or a mini Bum­ble­bee that stands on a card.

We Are Auto­bots — www​.weareau​to​bots​.com

Tokyo, Seoul, Berlin, Madrid and Lon­don. Trans­form­ers 2 is trav­el­ing the world and cre­at­ing tons of press in the process. Here are some videos and pho­tos from the big events, each one reveal­ing a dif­fer­ent Megan Fox out­fit, the Berlin one being par­tic­u­larly odd.

Playlist of Pre­mière videos

A small selec­tion of pro­fes­sional and fan filmed shots from a selec­tion of pre­mieres, for those that couldn’t be there:

Lon­don Première

Berlin Pre­mière

Madrid Pre­mière

Here’s another quick round up of some Trans­form­ers 2 arti­cles that are hit­ting the press at the moment.

Michael Bay’s earn­ings from first Trans­form­ers movie

via Yahoo,

Shia LaBeouf received an upfront sum of $500,000 for his role in the first “Trans­form­ers.” How­ever, Bay’s deal passed on a fee for direct­ing and exec­u­tive pro­duc­ing in exchange for a slice of the prof­its from all the film’s rev­enue sources. The film, which cost the stu­dio an esti­mated $155 mil­lion to make, earned over $700 mil­lion world­wide and was a top-selling DVD. Bay’s final take from the movie: some­where in the neigh­bor­hood of $75 million.

LaBeouf is get­ting a raise for the sequel, “Trans­form­ers: Revenge of the Fallen.” His pay­check is esti­mated at about $5 mil­lion. Bay will once again get a cut of the prof­its, which could take longer to accu­mu­late since the bud­get for the sec­ond movie approached $200 million.

ROVE inter­view Isabel Lucas

Matthew Mars­den injured in Heli­copter stunt

The Sun­day Mer­cury caught up with Matthew Mars­den to find out about his near death encounter with a heli­copter on the set of Trans­form­ers 2:

“It was a night­mare,” recalls Matthew, speak­ing from his home in Los Ange­les. “I had a very close shave when a heli­copter crashed and missed me by a foot. I stepped out of the way a sec­ond before it hit the ground. The stunt went off too early, I should have been some con­sid­er­able way away. I didn’t seri­ously injure myself, apart from shear­ing off one of my bot­tom teeth. There was a bit of blood, but my adren­a­line kicked in so I didn’t feel it.

“I just remem­ber the direc­tor, Michael Bay, shout­ing, ‘Oh my God! Every­one look at Matt!’. One of the crew rushed up and said, ‘Dude, do you have any idea how close that was?’. I said ‘As long as I look cool, I don’t care!’. Peo­ple will prob­a­bly think that it’s a computer-generated spe­cial effect, but I can assure you it was very real. It’s fine, I’m still here with all my fin­gers and toes, though not all my teeth.”

Insider inter­view Shia

Isabel Lucas interview

Sky News inter­viewed Isabel Lucas at the Tokyo world première:

It is Lucas’ first [press con­fer­ence] and admits it’s over­whelm­ing. ‘It’s been a whirl­wind,’ she says. ‘I’ve worked on five pro­duc­tions since Home and Away and this is the first one to be released, so I haven’t ever expe­ri­enced doing a press jun­ket or a pre­mière, so this is like really being thrown right into the midst of it, into the deep end.’

Spiel­berg, who is an exec­u­tive pro­ducer on the new Trans­form­ers movie, sug­gested her to direc­tor Michael Bay for the role of Alice after work­ing with her on the HBO mini-series The Pacific, which he also pro­duced. One suc­cess­ful audi­tion later and Lucas had landed the biggest movie role of her career.

‘I was really intrigued by the char­ac­ter because there is more than meets the eye — lit­er­ally,’ she says. ‘She’s a lay­ered char­ac­ter, and that’s inter­est­ing for any actor to play really some­thing dif­fer­ent from your­self and to under­stand and relate to her even though she might have darker inten­tions. She’s fun to play.’

She describes one par­tic­u­lar scene with LaBeouf which required an atten­tion to detail that she’d never expe­ri­enced before. The shot was so spe­cific for a cer­tain CGI effect that they were try­ing to achieve and the cam­era was about 30cm away and he (Bay) was like yelling at me so specif­i­cally to tilt my head down! Tilt it to the right! Tilt it down again! Now lift it slightly! But he really is an amaz­ing visual genius, and the fin­ished prod­uct you under­stand why he was being so spe­cific with details.’

‘They know that this genre of film is not really what I’m drawn to, I’m drawn to scripts that are unique and have mean­ing. But that’s what is so won­der­ful about being an actor, is the diver­sity of the kind of films you can be a part of. I’m just hon­oured for the oppor­tu­nity, and if it opens other doors career-wise I’ll be very fortunate.’

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 »

Fan­dango have released some press about Revenge of the Fallen ticket sales, which makes up approx­i­mately 21% of all movie tick­ets cur­rently being sold by Fandango.

With less than two weeks to go before its June 24 release date, Trans­form­ers: Revenge of the Fallen is already see­ing brisk ticket sales on Fan­dango, the nation’s lead­ing movie­goer des­ti­na­tion. Cur­rently, the film rep­re­sents 21% of ticket sales on Fan­dango (as of June 11 at 9 am PT).

Accord­ing to an ongo­ing Fan­dango sur­vey of movie­go­ers plan­ning to see Trans­form­ers 2:

* 81% of respon­dents say Megan Fox is the one star they’re most excited to see in the new movie.
* 76% say they are fans of direc­tor Michael Bay.
* 72% say the IMAX pre­sen­ta­tion of Trans­form­ers 2 will be an impor­tant part of their moviego­ing expe­ri­ence.
* 71% of respon­dents are 18–34 years old; 68% are male.

“Fans are already scoop­ing up tick­ets for Trans­form­ers 2’s open­ing week show­times, espe­cially for the IMAX screens,” says Ted Hong, Chief Mar­ket­ing Offi­cer for Fan­dango. “The movie is gar­ner­ing some great Inter­net buzz, and film­go­ers are clearly ready for another action-packed sum­mer pop­corn movie. With Trans­form­ers 2, Harry Pot­ter and the Half-Blood Prince, Ice Age 3, Pub­lic Ene­mies, Bruno, G.I. Joe and other highly-anticipated movies open­ing within a few weeks of each other, it looks like a ban­ner year for the movies.”

Para­mount Pic­tures UK have updated with some inter­est­ing and fun Trans­form­ers good­ies for us to pick out.

Sound­wave Satel­lite mode

The offi­cial UK Revenge of the Fallen site reveals Soundwave’s satel­lite mode in ren­dered CG form:

And Gen­eral Tekno over at TLAMB has man­aged to extract the clean ver­sion for us all:

Revenge of the Fallen Robot auditions

Five robot audi­tions (e.g. a drill and a George Fore­man grill) have been posted in jest, the video embed­ding doesn’t seem to be work­ing cor­rectly so I rec­om­mend you check them out on the PPUK site: TF2 Robot Auditions

Trans­form­ers 2 Wallpapers

A 1920x res­o­lu­tion of the standee is also avail­able for download:

In the trail­ers for Trans­form­ers 2 two web­sites were revealed on t-shirts, the​re​al​eff​in​gdeal​.com and giant​eff​in​gro​bots​.com/. Each of them relates to alien con­spir­a­cies and are peri­od­i­cally updated with new sto­ries, some made up and some link­ing to real news items.

The­Re­al­Eff­in­gDeal (TRED) is run by Sam Witwicky’s new flat mate Leo. Giant­Eff­in­gRo­bots (GER) is report­edly the voice of Agent Sim­mons, coun­ter­ing the child­ish giant robot claims. Recent updates on each of the sites has spurred me to make this post, espe­cially as the ROTF mar­ket­ing builds up.

Click the ever excit­ing more link to read the rest of this entry if the TF2 viral cam­paign holds your inter­est. I’ve cov­ered some of the best bits. A lot of the UFO non­sense on Leo’s site isn’t overly inter­est­ing, but hid­den within are some good Trans­form­ers gems.

Read the rest of this entry »