Another round-up of the weekend’s Trans­form­ers 2 news stories.

UK Box Office

Trans­form­ers 2 has, as of July 19th, been released to the UK pub­lic. The NY Times report that the sequel has taken 50% more in its open­ing week­end than it’s 2007 predecessor.

You can’t tell much from the box office per­for­mance of a film on a sin­gle night, in a sin­gle for­eign ter­ri­tory. But Para­mount exec­u­tives were con­grat­u­lat­ing them­selves on Sat­ur­day over the Fri­day night results of ‘Trans­form­ers: Revenge of the Fallen’ in the United King­dom. Word had it that the movie had done roughly 50 per­cent bet­ter than its pre­de­ces­sor, which two years ago went on to take in $389 mil­lion in for­eign mar­kets, and $319 at the domes­tic box office.

With the hot start in Eng­land, com­pany exec­u­tives were pri­vately spec­u­lat­ing that the new ;ldquo;Transformers;rdquo; film had a shot at becom­ing Paramount;rsquo;s second-highest gross­ing film, behind ;ldquo;Titanic,;rdquo; which took in a mon­strous $1.8 bil­lion world­wide under a split deal with Fox.

That would be a nice start for Adam Good­man, who was named pres­i­dent of the movie group on Fri­day, as two fel­low exec­u­tives, John Lesher and Brad Weston, were ush­ered out. Both were offered pro­ducer deals. The bet­ting here is that Mr. Weston will accept, while Mr. Lesher strikes for greener pastures.

Shia on The Tonight Show, June 19th

As part of the TV press tour Shia appeared on The Tonight Show last Fri­day with Conan O’Brien. Cour­tesy of Shia Videos

Ramon Rodriguez on Jimmy Kimmel

Ramon (Leo Spitz) talks stunts and Revenge of the Fallen on last Thursday’s edi­tion of the show:

Cast Q&A

Com­ing Soon have posted a tran­script of the Revenge of the Fallen Ques­tion and Answer ses­sion. The responses are all very jovial and do not give too much away about the movie. If you’re not one for read­ing, try out this handy video playlist from the same session:

Q: Are you already think­ing about the third film?

Bay: I don’t know. We’ll see how this one turns out.

Q: How many min­utes of deleted scenes might be on the DVD?

Bay: I don’t know. We’re fig­ur­ing it out right now. Seven or eight?

Q: Are you going to be shoot­ing more in IMAX?

Bay: I regret not shoot­ing the head scene in IMAX. But IMAX is very expen­sive. Just spe­cial effects in IMAX is expensive.

Q: Do you think you’ll be doing IMAX for all your future movies?

Bay: I don’t know. If the movie serves it.

Q: What else can we expect from the DVD?

Bay: This one is done by Rid­ley Scott’s DVD guy. We’re gonna have a lot of stuff on this. We’re gonna have a spe­cial IMAX ver­sion where it’ll open up the top and bottom.

TV talk show schedule

Thanks to TLAMB,

The sched­ule, sub­ject to change:
Th 6/18: Ramon Rodriguez — Jimmy Kim­mel Live (ABC)
Fr 6/19: Shia LaBeouf — The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien (NBC)
Tu 6/23: Isabel Lucas — Jimmy Kim­mel Live (ABC)
Tu 6/23: Tyrese Gib­son — Chelsea Lately (E!)
We 6/24: Josh Duhamel — Jimmy Kim­mel Live (ABC)
Th 6/25: Megan Fox — David Let­ter­man (CBS)
Th 6/25: Shia LaBeouf — Jimmy Kim­mel Live (ABC)
Th 6/25: Shia Labeouf — Live with Regis and Kelly (syn­di­cated)
Fr 6/26: Megan Fox — Jimmy Kim­mel Live (ABC)
Fr 6/26: Megan Fox — Live with Regis and Kelly (syn­di­cated)
Mo 6/29: Josh Duhamel — Live with Regis and Kelly (syndicated)

Crew screen­ings

Michael Bay answers ques­tions about when the cast and crew can watch the final feature:

Press is ask­ing about crew screeings

They seem to want to know about my crew screen­ings. Not sure why the press is inter­ested? We had 2500 crew mem­bers from many parts of the US and some in the Mid­dle East and Lon­don. We have an IMAX crew screen­ing Sun­day night. We have an ILM screen­ing Mon­day night and Para­mount invited some of my key crew mem­bers to the LA pre­mière I think Tues­day we are putting together a crew screen­ing which is being planned at Para­mount. Thurs­day we have an IMAX screen­ing in Wash­ing­ton for the Pen­ta­gon peo­ple involved in the film. And we have one set up in Jor­dan. BTW the press is not invited.

Michael Bay in the NYTimes

Bay dis­cusses the Trans­form­ers fran­chise and why he decided to take it on in his lat­est NYTimes interview:

And you cre­ated other char­ac­ters that weren’t estab­lished in the toys, the comics or the ani­ma­tion?
We wanted to get into the deeper lore of it. At one point, I’d already been shoot­ing the movie, and we were doing this scene in space. And I asked these Has­bro experts on Trans­form­ers, I said, “So, how are Trans­form­ers born?” And they kind of – dead pause. “I don’t know.” “What do you mean, you don’t know? Isn’t that one of the first things you fig­ure out?” [laughs] So I cre­ated how they’re born.

How are they born?
They’re in a spe­cial sac. They’re called hatch­lings. It’s quite nice.

Read full interview

Shia and Megan on La Grand Journal

Whilst in Paris Megan and Shia appeared on this French show, quite an enter­tain­ing video, but not com­pletely Trans­form­ers related. Thanks again to Shia LaBeouf Video.