Saab His­tory are report­ing that the Saab Aero-X con­cept car will be used in the Trans­form­ers sequel as the alt ver­sion of Wheel­jack. Given that Gen­eral Motors are pro­vid­ing the cars for the movie it is highly prob­a­ble that this rumor shall unfold to be true.

Thanks The Missle!

Fol­low­ing the Smith­son­ian rev­e­la­tion in the call sheet, fans rushed to the Smith­son­ian Air and Space Museum know­ing what, where and when to expect the Trans­form­ers film­ing crew to be doing. Topher­lyon has sent TLAMB his pic­tures of the event, and HowDe­sign have some up too. There’s a set report fol­low­ing the gallery that pro­vides some back­ground infor­ma­tion on the day’s events.

It is thought that the plane with the Auto­bot sym­bol on its tail, where no film­ing was tak­ing place, is Michael Bay’s per­sonal air­craft. You can also see sev­eral shots of the SR-71 Black­bird, which is now known to be Jet­fire. Out­side, Bum­ble­bee is clearly vis­i­ble as well as a green car (partly under cov­ers), thought to be a Chevy Beat con­cept, almost cer­tainly another Autobot.

Both Shia and Megan Fox have been spot­ted on set, though no clear pho­tos snapped.

I’ve got a first-hand Trans­form­ers 2 set report from Friday.

The mis­in­for­ma­tion machine con­tin­ues to roll for TF2. News was that TF2 would be film­ing in DC for a few days. Got a call from my buddy at 4pm yes­ter­day that they were film­ing at the Air and Space Museum, no not the one in DC, the Udvar-Hazy Air and Space Museum by Dulles Air­port in Dulles, VA (30 –40 mins out­side DC).

My friend and I quickly left work and headed over to the museum because it was only 5 min­utes away. We arrived there and there was noth­ing to really indi­cate that film­ing was going on, it was very low-key. Found them film­ing inside and the only way you could tell it was for TF2 was from the crew’s badges (an Auto­bot logo fol­lowed by the num­ber 2).

Met up with our buddy and watched a few scenes being filmed. Saw Michael Bay film­ing, but couldn’t make out what was going on too well because they kept us back far enough. Museum secu­rity and crew were heav­ily guard­ing the area from peo­ple tak­ing pho­tos. My buddy said Shia and Megan Fox were there ear­lier film­ing some scenes and Shia would be back soon. We finally saw what looked like Shia dressed in an old time pilots out­fit (think avi­a­tor gog­gles and a white scarf around the neck). He was stand­ing between a pil­lar and a man­nequin dressed like him, along with sev­eral other man­nequins dressed in dif­fer­ent pilot out­fits. They repeat­edly filmed a secu­rity guard run­ning by as Shia reached out and put a taser to his neck and the guard would fall to the ground.

We chat­ted with a crew mem­ber and he men­tioned how not many peo­ple knew they were there and that they had been film­ing there since Thurs­day. At the time we were there, they were film­ing around the SR-71 Black­bird. I don’t know how legit this is, but the crew mem­ber said that the Black­bird is going to be fea­tured very promi­nently in the film, but that peo­ple aren’t really sup­posed to know that. So if true, let the spec­u­la­tion begin as to what Trans­former this will be [Jetfire].

They con­tin­ued film­ing the taser scene as the museum closed and we were ush­ered out­side. The crew mem­ber also men­tioned they would be going out­side to film some scenes in the park­ing lot later. So when we got out­side we found the coned-off park­ing lot with a few cars sit­ting hud­dled together under tarps. One was clearly Bum­ble­bee, the rims and parts of the yel­low bumper were vis­i­ble. There was also a lime green car. From the look of the shape and the front bumper I would guess that it is either a Toy­ota Matrix or a Scion xA, but I’m prob­a­bly wrong. The third car had a very strange shape and I could not make it out.

Unfor­tu­nately, I couldn’t get close enough to the cars to get decent pic­tures on my cam­era phone. We waited around for a while but by 6:15 we had to leave. They were still inside at that time so we didn’t get to see the new cars actu­ally being filmed.

So there you have it. They are film­ing there again today and I plan on going back to check out some more. I’ll be sure to send along any­thing new I find out.

Oh, one last thing, Michael Bay flew to the Museum (which has its own run­way) and there on the run­way sat a white plane with the Auto­bots logo on the tail. Pretty freakin’ cool. Can’t remem­ber if he had that dur­ing film­ing for the first one, but he’s got it now!

SHH are report­ing via “Space Duck”, that one of the next film­ing loca­tions, now that the four day Beth­le­hem shoot has com­pleted, may be at the Air Force bone­yard in Ari­zona, stat­ing that prepa­ra­tion for the shoot has begun as the Tus­con facility.

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Slash Film have reported, via Jason X, that TF2 pro­duc­ers were scout­ing loca­tions with scale mod­els of Opti­mus Prime, Mega­tron and Star Scream:

My girl­friend works at East­ern State Pen­i­ten­tiary in the Fair­mount area of Philadel­phia. It was used as a prison from 1829 until 1971, and is now a his­tor­i­cal site and museum. Any­way, at the prison today pro­duc­ers for Trans­form­ers 2 were on site with scale mod­els of Mega­tron, Opti­mus Prime and Star Scream and were scout­ing film­ing loca­tions in cell block 1 and the prison kitchen. Just thought I’d let peo­ple know that film­ing should begin here soon.

TFW2000 state:

The Pon­tiac Sol­stice vehi­cle prop of Auto­bot Jazz arrived on the set of Trans­form­ers 2 ear­lier today. In addi­tion we’ve received con­fir­ma­tion from a sec­ond tip­ster that Dar­ius McCrary, the voice of Movie Jazz, is now on set as well.

On Don Murphy’s forums he has pub­licly stated that the pro­duc­tion team and co are hop­ing to achieve a set of 20 robots in Trans­form­ers 2, with roughly 10 on each side:

“I’d love and think we could almost barely man­age ten on each side, with some front and cen­ter and oth­ers as more supporting.”

Trans­form­ers 2 has a sub­ti­tle! In a post­ing made by pro­ducer Don Mur­phy on his forums, he linked to a blog post, reveal­ing the full title to the sequel:

Dream­Works — Para­mount Pic­tures have release the new title — Trans­form­ers 2: Revenge of the Fallen — for Trans­former sequel directed by Michael Bay. The Office’s Rainn Wil­son joins the orig­i­nal cast of Shia LaBeouf, Megan Fox, Josh Duhamel, John Tur­turro and Tyrese Gib­son in Trans­form­ers 2: Revenge of the Fallen.

Trans­form­ers 2: Revenge of the Fallen is writ­ten by Ehren Kruger, Alex Kurtz­man and Roberto Orci and pro­duced by Tom De Santo, Don Mur­phy and Lorenzo Di Bonaventura.

Prepa­ra­tion at the Steel Works site has begun, and the first images of the area have started to appear online.

It is thought that most of the shoot­ing will be on the west­ern side. A con­cept car not seen before shall be used dur­ing the shoot, and rumors sug­gest this could be a Trans­former, two Black­hawk heli­copters will also be in use. Addi­tion­ally, a car hauler with “2 Sat­urns and 5 chines styled cop cars” has been spot­ted on loca­tion. The Chi­nese sym­bols read only “Import / Entrance”, “Export / Exit”, “Dock­ing”, etc. — vehi­cle imports we can assume?

Pic­tures and infor­ma­tion come via TLAMB and TFW2005.