“Transformers 2″ To Begin Production June 2, 2008

A lot of people were really happy with “Transformers” this summer. I too had been looking forward to it since I grew up during the whole Transformers toy era. Unfortunately, I felt like the film ultimately let me down when it came to the story. Sure, there were tons of really cool effects and the action scenes were good, but the story and many of the actual scenes (such as the things the characters do on screen) made no sense whatsoever. I saw the movie with my 13 year old brother-in-law who couldn’t care less about a good story and even he thought critical elements of storytelling were missing.

But, I digress…

For better or worse, “Transformers” made a ton of money so there’s no way they wouldn’t make “Transformers 2.” It seems the guys over at IESB.net sat down with producer, Lorenzo di Bonaventura for an interview and got a few details:

IESB: Can you give us a quick update on Transformers 2. Is it still planned to start shooting in July of 08?

LDB: The second, June 2nd.

IESB: June 2nd?

LDB: Yep.

IESB: Is the story locked?

LDB: We’re no where because of the strike, we won’t know until we come back. We have a very fine outline and we know exactly where we want go with the movie but until this writers strike comes back, we’ll find out exactly where we are. Michael is completely on top of every detail. He’s designed a lot of great stuff already. He’s got a lot of great sequences imagined but you know, he needs some writers to work with before he’s ready to go, so I would say June 2nd is an unofficial start, it’s the target date we’d like to go for but, you know, we’ve got to get some writers to help us.

IESB: Now, comparing to Transformers 1, how much bigger is Transformers 2 going to be?

LDB: (laughs) You know, I’m gonna let Michael answer that question.

IESB: (laughs) Well, come on $700 million dollars…

LDB: I’ll say this much, I know that Michael wants to deliver a bigger experience for everybody.

So there you have it. The next one is going to be rushed into production by June 2, 2008. In case you don’t know, that’s really, really fast for a movie this big. And, considering how fast they’re putting this together and considering the fact that we have no idea when the writer’s strike will end, one must assume that the script might not be up to par. Considering my opinions on the last script, I’m not holding out a lot of hope for this one.

At least we know Michael Bay will blow a lot of stuff up if he doesn’t have a good story.