Lots of small news items com­ing out at the moment, didn’t seem worth giv­ing each of them their own post. Here goes:

Movie com­pleted this week

Michael Bay has com­mented that he hopes to have pro­duc­tion of Trans­form­ers Revenge of the Fallen com­pleted by the end of Wednesday:

“I’m a lit­tle stressed because I’m fin­ish­ing the movie tomor­row. Maybe Wednesday.”

That’s only 5 days before the world pre­mière in Tokyo!

ET exclu­sive TF2 footage today

ET will be air­ing some exclu­sive new footage from the movie some time today, as well as an inter­view with Megan Fox and Shia.

Box Office Track­ing — $175m 5-day opener?

From Nikki Finke:

[…] Rival stu­dios are telling me they expect Trans­form­ers 2: Revenge Of The Fallen to open with a high of $175M for its 5-day open­ing from Wednes­day, June 24 to Sun­day, June 28. Because the sequel came onto track­ing HUGE today. Para­mount will try to lower expec­ta­tions. But here’s what can’t be argued: Spider-Man 2 opened on Wednes­day, June 30, 2004, and did $152 mil­lion for its first 5 days. So Trans­form­ers 2 feels like at least it should be in the $160+M range.

IMAX tick­ets on sale in Australia

The IMAX in Syd­ney has put up its pre-orders for TF2, which can now be pur­chased. The first show­ing is at 12:01am. Buy tick­ets.

Wednes­day, Jun 24, 2009 — IMAX Syd­ney.
12:01AM (MIDNIGHT) 3:00PM 6:00PM 9:00PM
Thurs­day, Jun 25, 2009 — IMAX Syd­ney.
3:00PM 6:00PM 9:00PM
Fri­day, Jun 26, 2009 — IMAX Syd­ney.
3:00PM 6:00PM 9:00PM 11:59PM
Sat­ur­day, Jun 27, 2009 — IMAX Syd­ney.
12:00PM 3:00PM 6:00PM 9:00PM 11:59PM
Sun­day, Jun 28, 2009 — IMAX Syd­ney.
12:00PM 3:00PM 6:00PM 9:00PM
Mon­day, Jun 29, 2009 — IMAX Syd­ney.
3:00PM 6:00PM 9:00PM
Tues­day, Jun 30, 2009 — IMAX Syd­ney.
3:00PM 6:00PM 9:00PM
Wednes­day, Jul 1, 2009 — IMAX Syd­ney.
3:00PM 6:00PM 9:00PM

Famous mag­a­zine inter­view Shia

via Cine­plex:

“Mike has been bet­ter this time, he’s more com­fort­able and he’s doing dif­fer­ent stuff,” says LaBeouf, look­ing buff but for the cast on his bro­ken hand, dur­ing an inter­view in Los Ange­les last autumn. “It’s wild to watch Mike grow up and to acknowl­edge it. Every film­maker, every movie out, some­thing changes. You either gain some­thing or you lose some­thing, and I think this time Mike has gained a lot. I also think work­ing with Steven is really trans­form­ing Mike. His prepa­ra­tion is very dif­fer­ent on this one than it was on the first one.”

[Regard­ing request for Megan to gain some weight] “Megan Fox is gor­geous, still,” LaBeouf gal­lantly affirms. “And no, I didn’t think she was too skinny when she came back to do this. Megan has never looked bad. There’s always some­thing that Michael says, but he’s been good.”

“It’s big­ger, faster and stronger than what we did the first time,” he says. “We’re blow­ing every­thing up. I was just at Hol­lo­man Air Force Base, where we blew up an entire town! There are new char­ac­ters that are inter­est­ing. Our ban­ter is fast and it’s fun, it’s table tennis.”

“There’s cool stuff that hap­pens to Sam. Sam starts to lose his mind. He starts hav­ing visions of his grand­fa­ther, Archibald Witwicky, and that’s fun to play around with. And recess time with John Tur­turro [who plays the addled fed con­stantly at odds with Sam] is always fun…. It’s like Groundlings The­ater,” LaBeouf says, ref­er­enc­ing the L.A. com­edy troupe whose alumni include Will Fer­rell and Lisa Kudrow. “You’re ad lib­bing all day long. One of the beau­ti­ful things about Mike is that he’ll allow it. You can do free-form thought the whole day.”