Posted in the dark recesses that are the forums on Michael Bay’s offi­cial site, Shoot for the Edit, the admin recently spoke out about the sta­tus of the trans­form­ers sequel in regards to the expected delays caused by the strikes:

Bay just indi­cated to me that Trans­form­ers is still on sched­ule. The movie is still in heavy prep and “will be released JUNE 24th 2009.”

This came as a rebut­tal to the com­ments from Trans­form­ers writer Roberto Orci,

As you know, all screen­writ­ers are engaged in a labor dis­pute with the major stu­dios and media con­glom­er­ates that sub­si­dize much, but not all of the media con­tent that we con­sume. It may go on for a very long time. All the other writ­ers I’ve talked to on every level are ready to hold out FOREVER, all the while fig­ur­ing out ways to make a liv­ing out of the inter­net with­out studios.

So now the hard part for me and Alex and Ehren and all fans of Trans­form­ers is that the movie may suf­fer (unless of course you hate the first one so much that you feel our inat­ten­tion is a bonus). It may be pushed back or a host of other thing may hap­pen to it. For that we apol­o­gize truly.

will keep you posted…

Col­lider had the oppor­tu­nity to catch up with pro­ducer Jerry Bruck­heimer at the National Trea­sure: Book of Secrets jun­ket. In doing so they man­aged to reveal a num­ber of inter­est­ing new details about the film’s sched­ule (albeit in some ter­ri­bly phrased Eng­lish).

The impor­tant points to take from the interview:

• Nobody has been cast
• The movie may become a franchise
• Film­ing is set to start in June, if the writer’s strikes get resolved.

Some quotes:

Jerry Bruck­heimer: We hired a very inter­est­ing direc­tor – Mike Newell – who did one of the Harry Potter’s and also did Don­nie Brasco and he’s a very inven­tive, inge­nious direc­tor and I think he’s going to bring some­thing really spe­cial to it. […]

Q: Is this one of these prop­er­ties that you envi­sion the pos­si­bil­ity of a franchise […]?

Jerry Bruck­heimer: Yes. It’s a big pro­duc­tion and if they work it’s another char­ac­ter that you can take on other adventures.

Q: Do you have any cast­ing on it?

Jerry Bruck­heimer: Not yet.

We all like to see high res­o­lu­tion pic­tures, today I have two of them for you. The first is a whop­ping 300dpi 100mb ver­sion of the teaser poster. To illus­trate the detail of a pic­ture like this, here’s a fully sized extract:

The more astute will have noticed a link to this file on Why So Seri­ous. It appears to the bot­tom right of the nor­mal sized picture:

Down­load 100mb poster image

(beware, 100mb down­load may take a while!)
If this link suf­fers under the traf­fic, etc, here is a handy mir­ror site: Alter­nate Download

Next up we have the medium-to-high res­o­lu­tion ver­sion of that Empire mag­a­zine cover thanks to David:

Down­load (only 420kb this time)

So, yes­ter­day evening the Why So Seri­ous viral mar­ket­ing cam­paign that we have been par­tic­i­pat­ing in as of late came to its con­clu­sion by unveil­ing The Dark Knight teaser poster.

This post is a catch-up entry to fill in the gaps between the “step right up” chal­lenge and the release of the poster. My last post revealed a num­ber of scary cud­dly toys with loca­tions pinned to their bel­lies, at each of these loca­tions was a bak­ery with a cake, inside of which was an evi­dence bag con­tain­ing a phone, a joker card and a note. When each cake was grabbed, the bear was removed and we all came one step closer to hit­ting the bell.

Here are some more pic­tures of the cakes via our friends at Hol­ly­wood Chicago:

When all of these cakes were dis­cov­ered, hit­ting the bell won the prize… and click­ing through lead you to an evi­dence page with two joker cards:

Each of the cards is a link, the left card takes you to the poster page, which we have all seen by now. The right takes you to a sign up page for what looks to be some pre­view screen­ings in IMAX cin­e­mas across the coun­try — the pro­logue perhaps?

And here’s a pic­ture of the ticket via Hol­ly­wood Chicago:

Update: Bat­sean has been to the bak­ery to get his cake…

The note says:

“Wow, you really took the cake! Now, put the icing on it: call (phone num­ber) imme­di­ately from this phone and THIS PHONE ONLY. Do NOT give this phone num­ber to any­one else.

Let’s hope your fel­low goons come through as well as you. Once all the lay­ers are in place, you’ll all get your just desserts. I’m a man of my word”

Step Right Up

The count­down on the lat­est why so seri­ous viral mar­ket­ing puz­zle has come to an end, and revealed the final challenge.

www​.whysose​ri​ous​.com/​s​t​e​p​r​i​g​h​t​up/

Hang­ing from the stall in front of you are, as of now, 6 cud­dly toys, although not at all cute. Each of them has a loca­tion pinned on, a loca­tion that, by instruc­tion, you must travel to and not call.

The instruc­tions also ask you to go under the name “Robin Banks” (aka Rob­bing Banks) at each of these places, with “One per loca­tion, first come, first served”. It seems that each of these is a bak­ery store, with the prize being some­sort of bak­ery delight with an attached phone num­ber. Some of the bears are already start­ing to dis­ap­pear, and with each new dis­cov­ery the mal­let on the left hits a lit­tle harder.

Hit­ting the base of the machine used to invoke a pathet­i­cally small rise of the weight, not even enough to light the first level.

EDIT: Chal­lenge unveiled.

Via Hol­ly­wood Chicago:

humanresources@​whysoserious.​com has sent out a new WhySoSe​ri​ous​.com
mes­sage and code for “The Dark Knight” viral marketing:

Heads up, clown! Tomor­row means that there’s one last shifty step left in the inter­view process: Arwoeuf­gryo

By mov­ing each let­ter one to the right on a QWERTY key­board, the word “steprightup” is spelled.

This led to a new WhySoSe​ri​ous​.com page at the URL www​.whysose​ri​ous​.com/​s​t​e​p​r​i​g​h​tup with a count­down to 12 p.m. EST on Dec. 4 along with a stuffed mon­key with an exposed stom­ach.

These pro­mo­tional pic­tures come via Uru­loki which is get­ting pretty ham­mered at the moment. After all that viral mar­ket­ing we get some­thing truly reward­ing via some­thing com­pletely unre­lated… not sure if these promo pics were leaked early or not, though they come at a time when lots of pub­li­ca­tions are get­ting their Joker fix on. These are spread­ing like wild­fire, as fast as those other con­tro­ver­sially leaked screen cap images we briefly saw a few months back.

With­out fur­ther adieu, here are Bat­man and The Joker, pos­ing beau­ti­fully for you:

EDIT: Sorry folks, looks like the images are being pulled down! Hence they are gone from here too.