Shia LaBeouf recently did an interview with Los Angeles Times, explaining a bit about Megan Fox’s departure in Transformers: Dark Of The Moon.

“Megan developed this Spice Girl strength, this woman-empowerment [stuff] that made her feel awkward about her involvement with Michael, who some people think is a very lascivious filmmaker, the way he films women,” LaBeouf said. “Mike films women in a way that appeals to a 16-year-old sexuality. It’s summer. It’s Michael’s style. And I think [Fox] never got comfortable with it. This is a girl who was taken from complete obscurity and placed in a sex-driven role in front of the whole world and told she was the sexiest woman in America. And she had a hard time accepting it. When Mike would ask her to do specific things, there was no time for fluffy talk. We’re on the run. And the one thing Mike lacks is tact. There’s no time for [LaBeouf assumes a gentle voice] ‘I would like you to just arch your back 70 degrees.’”

But Shia also explains about his new leading lady Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, and that her character Carly is way different than Mikaela Banes.

“Rosie comes with this Victoria’s Secret background, and she’s comfortable with it, so she can get down with Mike’s way of working and it makes the whole set vibe very different,” LaBeouf said.

It’s not just the set environment that changed when Huntington-Whiteley arrived, LaBeouf said, but the relationship between his character, Sam Witwicky, and his lady. In “Dark of the Moon,” a Cybertronian spacecraft has been discovered on the moon and the alien robots are stirring. Sam, who fought beside the good-guy Autobots in two wars with the Decepticons, has graduated from college, only to face a breakup with Mikaela and an economy with 10% unemployment.

“Sam’s sort of frustrated,” LaBeouf said. “He has no purpose in life. When he was with the Autobots, he had purpose. He was needed. But he’s got this very supportive girl [Huntington-Whitley's Carly Miller] who’s having him go to these job interviews and trying to nurture him, get him back on his feet. It’s a different female energy than he experienced with Mikaela, who was a very cold biker chick. This woman’s more of a maternal, loving type. Sam wants a domestic, eggs-in-the-morning kind of a thing.”

From what he has described, I think I’m now prefer Carly to Mikaela *wink*. Hopefully Rosie won’t disappoint us.

As we are having a news drought of our man Shia (who’s currently still filming The Wettest County in the World in Atlanta), I came across the web and found this pretty interesting article from Variety. As you already know, the summer of 2011 will be filled with fun action/sci-fi blockbuster movies including Shia’s Transformers: Dark of the Moon. But with the final installment of Harry Potter, the beginning of Thor, Captain America, and then the fourth Pirates of the Caribbean, which one do you think will win the box office race?

This summer, Hollywood will find out if it can Americanize the world box office by having it adopt the U.S.’ summer blockbuster season.

With four multibillion-dollar franchises — “Pirates of the Caribbean,” “Transformers,” “Harry Potter” and “X-Men” — up against high-profile projects like “Green Lantern” and “Captain America: The First Avenger,” the season’s summer blitz pushes blockbusters out within weeks of each other, leaving little room for much else.

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Michael Bay came forward in talks about how Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen was a mess, and that he’s going to make it up through Transformers: Dark Of The Moon—saying that this movie is going to be superior than the previous two, and will be the last Transformers movie he directed.

“It was kind of a mess, wasn’t it? Look, the movie had some good things in it and it was entertaining and it did very well, but it also failed in some key ways. I learned from it. And now with this third movie we’re going back to basics and I absolutely believe this is going to be a much better film than the second one. I’m still having fun and especially with this movie. Look, we got burned on the last movie. The big thing was the writers’ strike, it hurt the film and it made it hard on everybody. We had three weeks to get our story and, really, we were going into the movie without a script. It’s tough to do that. It was too big of a movie. There were too many endings or too many things that felt like endings. There was so much animation [in the visual effects postproduction work], too, and we ran out of time. We used the schedule of the first movie for the second movie but on the second one way more labor was needed for the animation. And then it felt like we were writing the script in the edit room, trying to put together a story.”

Source: Movie Web

This article also came along with an official behind-the-scene photo, where you can see our man Shia LaBeouf and Rosie Huntington-Whiteley doing some stunts, while Michael is directing them through the megaphone.

Movies > (2011) Transformers: Dark Of The Moon > Official Behind The Scenes

The Transformers director Michael Bay did an interview with Collide recently, talking about the previous Transformers franchise as well as the latest one, Dark of the Moon.

We tried to learn from the second movie. On the second movie we got burned. We had a writers strike, we had to agree on a story in three weeks, and then we knew they were going on strike. It was a fucked scenario all the way around, it wasn’t fair to the writer, it wasn’t fair to me, it wasn’t fair to anybody. It was still an entertaining movie, but I think we failed on certain aspects. What we did with this movie is I think we have a much better script, and we got back to basics. I think there’s some really cool action on this movie, there’s some very cool conspiracy, there’s great robot stuff in this that people were missing in the second one, you’ve got great robot conflict. So I’m excited about this movie. It’s more serious. I got rid of the dorky comedy, I mean we’ve got two little characters, that’s it, but the dorkiness is not there. Dork-free Transformers. It’s much more serious. It’s still entertaining, it’s big looking.

Michael also gave a glimpse about the new character, Carly, played by Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, who was said to be an assistant of UK Embassy and that Sam Witwicky (our lovely Shia) lives with her while he’s trying to get his first job. I personally love Rosie—she’s pretty and even Michael and Steven Spielberg were “intrigued” by her casting tape. Michael also said that there he won’t be directing for anymore Transformers installments. Full interview under the cut, including the technical stuff about the 3D shoots. It’s worth reading!

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Here’s an article about the upcoming installment Transformers 3 in USA Today. Seems like Michael Bay tries to explain why the second movie’s plot was ‘horrible’ and that this third movie will be the “end” and will be in 3D. Our guy Shia LaBeouf also talks a bit about Megan Fox’s departure.

Next ‘Transformers’ is due for a switch

By Anthony Breznican, USA TODAY
LOS ANGELES — The Transformers promise they can change, baby.
With shooting underway on a third movie and plans to debut next summer, Michael Bay and Co. acknowledge missteps with the last one and aim to upgrade the shape-shifting robot franchise with a more coherent story, less goofball humor and a pledge that characters who die will stay dead. It will also be in 3-D.

Revenge of the Fallen was the No. 2 movie of 2009 (behind only Avatar), earning $836 million worldwide — clearly very popular, though complaints from some moviegoers and a negative fusillade from critics made the filmmakers take notice.

“I’ll take some of the criticism,” says Bay, standing at a set built to resemble a dilapidated nuclear reactor. “It was very hard to put (the sequel) together that quickly after the writers’ strike (of 2007-08).”

Producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura says the rush strained the plot: “We tried to do too many things in the second movie, which didn’t give enough time in any one of them. We were constantly jumping to the next piece of information, the next place.”

Bay is not one for mea culpas, but he says he can do better. “This one really builds to a final crescendo. It’s not three multiple endings,” the director says.

Bay calls the second film’s villain, The Fallen, “kind of a (expletive) character.” The new movie’s foe is certain to make fans of the original ’80s incarnation smile: Shockwave, the robot cyclops-turned-laser-cannon, who became dictator of their home world of Cybertron after the other Autobots and Decepticons journeyed to Earth.

“One thing we’re getting rid of is what I call the dorky comedy,” Bay adds. So the twins, the two bumbling, slang-spewing robots? “They’re basically gone,” he says, though John Turturro returns for comic relief.

The new film features Sam Witwicky (LaBeouf) taking his first tenuous steps into adulthood while remaining a reluctant human ally of Optimus Prime. “Shia has this great line: ‘You know, I’ve saved the world twice, but I can’t get a job,’ ” di Bonaventura says.

Megan Fox, who played Mikaela, was dropped just before shooting, so LaBeouf’s character also has a new love interest, played by Victoria’s Secret model Rosie Huntington-Whiteley.

“I love Megan and I miss the girl,” LaBeouf says, flecked with fake blood and dirt during a break between shooting. “But Sam and Mikaela became one character, and here … you have discovery again from a new perspective.”

Plot details are under wraps, but it delves into the space race between the U.S.S.R. and the USA, suggesting there was a hidden Transformers role in it all that remains one of the planet’s most dangerous secrets. “The movie is more of a mystery,” Bay says. “It ties in what we know as history growing up as kids with what really happened.”

While Optimus Prime, Megatron and even Sam all have died and been resurrected, di Bonaventura says this film will have no do-overs: Die, and that’s it.

Bay hints that there may be a lot of that. “As a trilogy, it really ends,” he says. “It could be rebooted again, but I think it has a really killer ending.”

Source: USA Today