Talking to the Wall Street Journal, Bay repeated that he's not looking to jump into the next Transformers movie right away despite Dreamworks' announced release date:

I just want to take some time off. It's been almost three years that I've devoted myself entirely to this world of robots. At some point, enough is enough-and I literally carried this movie on my back. I only finished it in the last week [before release... but] I don't know who [would] want to take on my shoes with this franchise. We might just take a year down.

One thing you shouldn't expect from a Bay-directed Transformers 3 will be 3-D, apparently:

I prefer the flat screen. I'm not jumping to do 3-D at all-it's a pain in the neck to shoot it and I actually like the flat image. I've heard that some people can't even see 3-D and, moreover, that a major side effect of watching it is feeling exhausted. Can you imagine how you'd feel watching one of my movies in 3-D?

And, judging from the tone of his comments about Transformers star Megan Fox, maybe we shouldn't expect her in the third movie, either:

She says some very ridiculous things because she's 23 years old and she still has a lot of growing to do. You roll your eyes when you see statements like that and think, "Okay Megan, you can do whatever you want. I got it." But I 100% disagree with her. Nick Cage wasn't a big actor when I cast him, nor was Ben Affleck before I put him in "Armageddon." Shia LaBeouf wasn't a big movie star before he did "Transformers"-and then he exploded. Not to mention Will Smith and Martin Lawrence, from "Bad Boys." Nobody in the world knew about Megan Fox until I found her and put her in "Transformers."

He made you and he can break you, Megan. Not that he's outright saying that last part, or anything. Well, only kinda sorta.

Master of Machines [Wall Street Journal]

Box office estimates late Sunday gave Transformers $201.2 million for the five day opening weekend, which isn't enough to beat The Dark Knight's $203.8 million, but enough to make it the second highest 5-day opening in US box office history, and the second film ever to break the $200 million mark in such a short amount of time. Already the third most successful film of the year, it's likely to take the top spot in a matter of days.

Internationally, the film has grossed $387 million.

'Transformers' on top with $201.2 mil [Variety]

In its first three days in the US, Michael Bay's sequel has made $125.9 million, leading some industry watchers to predict a 5-day total of over $190 million - up $30 million from what it was initially expected to take. If the movie's momentum - which has bypassed the cool reception it received from critics - keeps up, it's possible that it may make much more than $190 million... and break last year's Dark Knight record of $203.8 million. Box office estimates for Saturday aren't in yet, but even at $190 million, it'll be the second most-successful 5 day opening in US box office history (Even if it magically made no money on Saturday or Sunday, it'd still be in the top 15).

(Memo to Chris Nolan: Make Batman Vs. The Transformers as your Dark Knight sequel. The world will be yours.)

'Transformers' pulls in $36.7 on Friday [Variety]

The two films lying ahead of Michael Bay's giant robot sequel are 2005's Star Wars Episode III: Revenge Of The Sith and last year's The Dark Knight, demonstrating that genre sequels are apparently the way to go get a big opening number at the box office. Transformers' haul was only $2.5 million below The Dark Knight's $18.5 million, and the two movies flip positions when it comes to IMAX screens - Transformers took that particular top spot with $1 million, against Dark Knight's previous record of $675,000.

Coming so soon after last weekend's stunning international debut, the question is now whether the movie will turn out to be critic- and word-of-mouth-proof, and if so, whether we're looking at the movie that's going to dominate the summer.

'Transformers' rakes in $16 million [Hollywood Reporter]

To give an idea of just how successful Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen was in the UK and Japan this week, consider this: It made $1.6 million more than its closest competitor (Terminator Salvation, which is continuing to succeed internationally as much as it failed in the US) despite playing in less than 10% of the number of theaters. Early reporting gave Transformers $20 million dollars over the weekend from just 846 theaters, against Terminator's $18.4 million from 9,400 screens.

Paramount is reporting that Revenge Of The Fallen is outperforming the original Transformers movie by a staggering 71% in the UK (and 13% in Japan), upping expectations for the movie's worldwide opening - including the US - this Wednesday.

New 'Transformers' bows No. 1 overseas [Hollywood Reporter]

In a first for a major movie, four of the five branches of America's military participated in the production of Michael Bay's mechanical melodrama sequel - The Coast Guard being the missing military, thereby robbing us of any chance of seeing action like this - something that Army Lt. Col. Greg Bishop feels is as close to realism as a movie like this can get:

This is probably the largest joint-military movie ever made... If you go down the list of military movies, ‘Black Hawk Down' was just about all Army, ‘Top Gun' was all Navy, ‘Iron Man' was predominantly Air Force [but, in reality, s]oldiers on the ground love to look up in the sky and see fighter jets over their shoulder... In ‘Transformers,' we're fighting alien robots, so realism is obviously out the window [but if it were to happen] this is how we'd do it.

Said realism comes, in part, from Harry Humphries, a retired Navy SEAL who has consulted with Bay on movies since 1996's The Rock:

Michael initially had a typically Hollywood attitude toward how things should look, but he's learned a lot in 10 years... I would say [Bay's 2001 historical drama] ‘Pearl Harbor' was his turning point.

Of course, there's a secondary benefit to such verismilitude in filmmaking for the military: using the movies as advertisements. Bishop, again:

I suspect most American citizens could never accurately describe what it's like to be a soldier in today's Army. They get their perception of the Army through the media, so our job is to educate the American people on who we are.

It's something that the Air Force's deputy director of public affairs, Captain Bryon McGarry, agrees with:

Recruiting and deterrents are secondary goals, but they're certainly there.

Film biz, military unite for mutual gain [Variety]

Talking at this weekend's BotCon, screenwriters Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman explained the unusual genesis of Revenge's story, which started two weeks before last year's WGA writers strike, when the two had to pound out a 20 page outline for the movie that would be used as a pre-production guideline while the strike was going on. Once the strike finished, months later?

When the strike ended in February, Mr. Kurtzman and Mr. Orci were asked to get moving, post haste, on a full script for a movie that was already barreling toward the screen. But they were also lined up to work on the new "Star Trek" movie for Paramount, and a couple of other films that were all colliding because of the strike. So they hooked up with Ehren Kruger, a writer whose credits include "The Ring" and "Scream 3."

For several months, said the writers, they were repeatedly locked in a hotel suite with Mr. Kruger, with whom they divided the work. Mr. Kurtzman and Mr. Orci wrote pages. Mr. Kruger wrote pages. They swapped. Mr. Bay dropped by once in a while to demand: "What are you guys doing?"

Yeah, that makes me feel much better about the story for this one. That said, I'd love to have been a fly on the wall of that hotel room, just to see the process...

Screenwriters Describe Post-Strike Scramble to Make "Transformers" Sequel [NYTimes]

Well, I guess I could tell you more... For one thing, this is the week where we find out who the new Batman is (Clue: It's exactly who you think it is) in Batman: Battle For The Cowl #3 (Another hero identity revelation can be found in Marvel's Who Is The Black Panther? collection).

It's also the week where Garth Ennis' The Boys spins out a new series, Herogasm, parodying superhero excess, just as Marvel's Captain America reaches its 50th issue with the start of a storyline apparently as shocking as Cap's assassination.

Shying away from similar controversies, DC looks to the stars for Rann/Thanagar: Holy War, the first (of two) collections of their cosmic jihad storyline, just as Marvel's Planet Skaar Prologue and Ultimate Galactus Trilogy demonstrate more traditional approaches to intergalactic invasions. Also traditional and from Marvel, X-Men Forever: Alpha reprints Chris Claremont and Jim Lee's swansong together ahead of the upcoming series set in that continuity, providing the most old-fashioned book available this week... Well, apart (perhaps) from Batman: Mad Love And Other Stories, a hardcover collecting all of Paul Dini and Bruce Timm's joint comic work.

You don't want to know about all of that, though; you want to know about IDW's Transformers extravaganza that sees two movie prequel collections (Alliance and Defiance) as well as the collection of Revenge Of The Fallen: Movie Adaptation and the first issue of the serialization, as well.

How could you ask for more... and even if you did, what would you ask for?

Perhaps Dracula, who gets two books to himself this week, both adapting Bram Stoker's original novel - Ben Templesmith's Dracula presents the original text with new illustrations from the Australian wunderkind, while The Complete Dracula sees the book (complete with "missing" chapters) adapted into traditional comic form over five issues. Why not take a bite out of both, to compare?

Whether it's giant robots or bloodsucking vampires, your local comic store should be able to crave your particular desires. And once you've run down the complete shipping list for the week, you'll have a better idea of what kind of fangs... I mean things are yours for the taking.

While we just got out of the panel, we wanted to be first to tell you the details on the movie adaptations. Both movies will receive four-book weekly work-ups. The four-book arc for Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen will be written by Simon Furman with artwork by Jon Davis-Hunt and Alex Milne. Covers will be drawn by Josh Nizzi.

The four-issue story arc for G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra will be written by Denton J. Tipton with artwork by Casey Maloney.

These images, which first surfaced on the ACToys Message Board, may be of one of the component parts of Devastator, the mega-Transformer made up of seven different robots in the next Transformers movie; Devastator - who's been around as a toy since 1985 - was originally a robot made up of the combination of the "Constructicons," "cleverly" named Decepticons who transformed into construction vehicles, as this one seems to.

Personally, I hope that Devastator becomes the most popular of all the second movie's characters, if only because it increases the chances of my seeing Defensor in the third movie.

Constructicon toy surfaces [Transformers Movie Chronicles]

Over at Ain't It Cool, a reader who attended the Paramount press junket in London reported back on his take on what he saw of Abrams channeling Rodenberry:

We saw the teaser trailer and then we saw what looked to be a very very early version of the full trailer – It showed more footage of Quito as Spock, much more Chris Pine and also some John Cho and Simon Pegg footage. The film looks like immense fun and there seems to be a lot of action in it. There look of the crew and the bridge is spot on and the costumes look like the original but with a more modern and practical twist. We got to see Spock talking to his parent as well and Kirk being told to take more responsibility. There were also a lot of montage scenes involves spaceship battles, gun fights and hand to hand combat. I especially like a short clip where we see the crew running through the corridors of the Enterprise – reminded me of next generation loads.

But if reading that the movie will be action-packed, faithful to the original but not beholden to it and, most importantly, feature hot Vulcan parental-child conversations, doesn't excite you, then maybe you'd be more interested in knowing that the movie's release will also include the first full trailer for Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen.

Between Star Trek, Transformers 2 and GI Joe, I think we can pretty much expect Paramount to own next summer's box office.

Icaddy reports on a Paramount preview [Ain't It Cool]

Talking about the beginning of his role as the giant Autobot leader, Cullen said,

When I looked at the breakdown of Optimus Prime in the original show, it was a hero. My older brother, Larry, was my hero. He had returned from Vietnam. He was with the Marine Corps, and he saw some pretty heavy experience. It was his tone of voice and delivery as a leader, his control that impressed me, and I applied my brother's attitude to life to Optimus Prime. It just rang a bell, and I was cast in that part. I guess people somehow picked up on that. There's a calmness to Optimus Prime, and yet a gentility and strength and honor and dignity, that are synonymous with the Marines.

Suddenly the other armed forces are getting very jealous; don't worry, Navy - I've heard that Jazz is all about you guys.

Although he couldn't spill the plot of Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen, Cullen did share that the bigger budget meant an increased role for him:

I only know the lines I've read, and I'm not allowed to disclose any of those. But the amount of success that 'Transformers' had on a financial level is providing a lot more screen time for Optimus Prime. It's very expensive to do all these robot characters because of the 10,000 moving parts. Thankfully we were a hit, so there's 'Transformers 2' and maybe 'Transformers 3.' I think 'Transformers 2' is going to be an incredible, incredible picture. I can see the excitement in the faces of the people involved, and it generates quite a bit of excitement in me too.

Heavy metal: Peter Cullen's voice powers 'Transformers [ReadingEagle]

The rumors came about as the result of director Michael Bay's comments on Access Hollywood:

Bay told "Access Hollywood" in an interview airing Friday that LaBeouf's left hand was significantly enough mangled that the script may need to be adjusted.

"His two fingers are pretty smashed, but we're figuring out a way to shoot around it, kind of write it into the story," Bay told the syndicated entertainment program.

A spokesman for Paramount Pictures, which is owned by Viacom Inc., said Friday that no final decisions have been made.

Personally, I hope that there's a really awkward scene where we see Bumblebee slam his door shut on Sam's hand after a surprisingly lame argument, followed by Bay appearing onscreen to address the audience by shrugging his shoulders and saying, "Hey, it's the best we could do on such short notice."

`Transformers' may be adapted for LaBeouf's injury [Mail.com]