On the week­end end­ing 23rd Octo­ber Trans­form­ers 2 was spot­ted film­ing around the pyra­mids in Egypt, as reported by Wax­word and TLAMB scooper Dan:

Set report from Wax­Word:

A major mile­stone qui­etly passed last week­end: the first major Hol­ly­wood film in decades filmed in the heart of the Mid­dle East. “Trans­form­ers II” turned its cam­eras at the Pyra­mids in Egypt, and again in the upper Egypt­ian town of Luxor, near the famed Val­ley of the Kings. This is sig­nif­i­cant for many rea­sons but mainly because it rep­re­sents a rare move by two Hol­ly­wood stu­dios, Para­mount and Dream­Works, to con­nect to a coun­try and cul­ture that is per­ceived to be hos­tile the United States.

I say ‘per­ceived’ because my guess is you’d prob­a­bly find no more avid fans else­where in the world than those clus­tered around Shia LeBeouf, the star of the film, in this part of the world. But after years of anti-American images in the Mid­dle East, and years of entrenched mis­trust, this is the kind of inter­ac­tion – and pub­lic­ity — that makes a dif­fer­ence. I hear from sources within the stu­dio that Dream­Works was “pet­ri­fied” when pro­duc­ers got clear­ance to shoot at the pyra­mids and in Luxor, and that LeBeouf was hes­i­tant but decided to take the leap. (I agreed to hold this news until pro­duc­tion had been safely completed.)

In the end, “Trans­form­ers II” shot for sev­eral days, bring­ing together a crew of 150 Amer­i­cans and sev­eral dozen local Egyp­tians for an effort that pro­ducer Lorenzo di Bonaven­tura, who called from a cell­phone while stand­ing beside the pyra­mids, told me was “remark­ably smooth.”

Dan’s report:

Hi there, I’m not a fan of Trans­form­ers but I can con­firm after vis­it­ing the Pyra­mids sec­tion in Cairo last Fri­day (17th oct) that there was indeed a film crew film­ing on the third pyra­mid in the Giza area (can’t remem­ber the name, but for those of you that know, its the Pyra­mid with half of one side that looks like it’s been dug out. They were film­ing some scene late in the after­noon before sun­set (when the heat was less intense) and it was quite amaz­ing because my girl­friend and I sat on some rocks 20 metres away from it all and man­aged not to get sussed out by the secu­rity crew (who were all wear­ing T2 badges…one of the crew was tying up his shoelace behind me and con­firmed to me it was T2)about 40 peo­ple on site, the locals were try­ing to get their camels and don­keys in the scenes, which involved one of the cast climb­ing part of the pyramid.….