Talking during a press appearance for Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen, Shia LeBeouf said that earlier reports of his disinterest in the movie had been exaggerated:

"Y: The Last Man" is my favorite comic book. It's also [director] DJ Caruso's favorite comic book. We DO want to make it... Vaughn and [screenwriter Carl] Ellsworth and DJ are writing the script now. The script is not ready to be shot. DJ is making a different movie right now. He's making "Jack and the Beanstalk". There's just other things going on with DJ and I wouldn't want to make the movie with anybody else because he loves it like I do. But I don't think Vaughn is trying to give it to anybody else. I think that it is something that's very realistic, it's just not in the pipe for the next year.

There's only one thing for it: We have to do something to make Shia go off the idea again.

Shia LaBeouf talks Y: THE LAST MAN - Says the Project Could Still Happen [Collider]

LeBeouf, who's been linked to the role ever since director D.J. Caruso became involved in the project, told Wizard magazine that he couldn't see himself playing the titular last man alive on Earth because of similarities to his Transformers character, Sam Whitwicky:

You take Sam and you put a monkey on his shoulder... I don't know if it's that big a differential. It seems like he's the ordinary guy in an extraordinary situation again... I'm not willing to make that movie currently, and may be too old to play the role by the time it does come around.

While I have nothing really bad against Shia, he never seemed right for the character to me. But who could step into Yorick Brown's shoes convincingly? Start your casting speculation now.

No Y: The Last Man for Shia LaBeouf [Superhero Hype]

MTV revealed the Fallen in an exclusive image earlier today, along with Shia talking about what to expect from Michael Bay's latest horrorbot:

Basically, the Fallen is to them what cavemen, Neanderthals were to us... He's the ancestor, the first version of this exoskeleton. He's the first version of this sentient being. That's what he is. He's the origins of what they came from. [The relationship between him and Megatron is] the Emperor and Darth Vader - it's that kind of situation... He's the main villain, so two and two makes four. He's a badass. He has to be. The Fallen, his transportation method is really unlike any other robot's transportation method. The way he fights is also very different. It's spectacular, visually stunning, really incredible.

MTV will be premiering footage from Revenge Of The Fallen during tomorrow's MTV Movie Awards show.

Shia LaBeouf Reveals 'Transformers' Villain The Fallen [MTV Movies]

The potential murder plot theory holds some water - after all, Shia has survived the shooting of the first Transformers , the fourth Indiana Jones and hopefully the only Eagle Eye unscathed... but only a few months after mangling his left hand while in the middle of shooting the sequel to last year's toy epic, he somehow managed to injure himself in the eye. Presuming that LeBeouf hasn't suddenly become almost comedically careless, what other possible explanation could there be?

Of course, the possibility that someone has marked Mutt for death is being downplayed by di Bonaventura, but you can sense the tension on set from all of Shia's little accidents:

Everything is fine... He got a little nick, and because he has been hurt recently, immediately everything gets magnified...Thank God he is fine, and we are getting close to the end now. [It was] one of our props, and it's a big prop. It could have been a big cut, but it wasn't.

Of course, now that he's got your attention, di Bonaventura would much rather try and sell you on how awesome the new movie is going to be:

It's going great — it's going to be big, it's going to be better, and it's going to be more emotional. Michael [Bay] is killing it, and it is going to be amazing. It's one of those sequels where people are really going to say we went after it and topped ourselves. There are a lot of new characters... My favorite aspect of the movie is that in the first movie, we were able to go on a very simple emotional construct: Boy gets a car, gets a girl. And in this movie, on an emotional level, we are taking the audience to much deeper things. We are asking about the responsibility in becoming an adult and things that have expanded the characters. Hopefully the experience of the movie will be more fulfilling than that of the first one.

And if LeBeouf happens to meet an... unfortunate end through some unlikely accident before the movie comes out...? Well, it didn't hurt The Dark Knight much, did it...? We're onto you, di Bonaventura. Don't think we're not...

Shia LaBeouf Is 'Fine' After Latest Injury, 'Transformers' Producer Says [MTV]

Caruso spoke to SciFi Wire about the movie:

Well, I think Yorick is a fantastic role for Shia [LeBeouf]. One, because Yorick has great sort of self-deprecating humor. ... One thing Shia really brings to him is that ... realistic acting style and being put in some crazy, ... super-realistic situations. Shia always keeps them real and keeps it grounded. He's endearing. I'm hoping that the 355 relationship, ... I always thought it would be really cool to have that be sort of a [Robert] De Niro-[Charles] Grodin ... banter type relationship, like they had in Midnight Run. I think that Shia would be a great sort of receiver and giver on both sides of that. I think he'd really bring a lot to it... I haven't given deep thought [to casting other characters], because we just [finished the script]. I mean, it was so cool we finally plotted out and licked the first screenplay. I think it's one of three if, God willing, the things are successful. And so I haven't really given it much thought. But, ... it's [going to have 355]. We've got 711. We've got Dr. Mann. We've got Hero. ... We've got a lot of interesting casting choices. You know, as Shia said, this would be a really fun movie to be a guy in [laughs].

But how would the movie end?

I don't want to give away too much of the end, but I think basically you know, Yorick and 355 will basically walk away and go off into the sunset, knowing that they're going to have to keep going on the run, and you might sort of look up in the sky and realize that maybe Yorick is at that point, and he might not be the last man or he might be the last man, and that ... the journey and the continuing on the run is going to have to go from there.

He "might not be the last man"? Unless this means movie audiences are going to get an early reveal of Dr. Mann's father, then am I the only one worried that we're going to see a much more upbeat end to this version of the story that might than fans of Brian K. Vaughan's original would be expecting? If so, then suddenly Shia being the final specimen of human masculinity in the world is no longer the scariest thing we've heard about this project.

Caruso Offers New Y Hints [SciFi Wire]

James Doohan was nineteen years old when he joined the Royal Canadian Artillery, and twenty-four years old when he got his first combat assignment: the invasion of Juno Beach, on the coast of Normandy, on D-Day. After leading his unit to defensive positions for the night, a trigger-happy sentry shot a light machine gun at Doohan, and he took one round through his right middle finger (as well as four shots to the leg and one in the chest). Now there's a situation where amputation is unfortunately guaranteed.

In his time as TV's Montgomery Scott, Chief Engineer of the USS Enterprise, Doohan's scenes were shot with stunt double hands. You can spot his injury in three episodes: "The Trouble with Tribbles," "Tomorrow Is Yesterday," and "Catspaw."

Donald Kent "Deke" Slayton, one of the original "Mercury Seven" NASA astronauts, lost his left ring finger to a horse-drawn hay mower when he was a young farm boy in Sparta, Wisconsin. He was the only one of the Mercury Seven not to fly in the Mercury program. Believe it or not, however, that had nothing to do with his missing finger — it was because of his heart arrhythmia. Since he was a right-handed pilot, NASA figured his missing left ring finger wasn't an issue. And astronauts today aren't allowed to have had LASIK? I call bullshit.

Daryl Hannah rose to sci-fi stardom after portraying alluring replicant Pris in Blade Runner. And she did it without her left index finger: when she was three, she got the unlucky appendage caught in the pulley of her grandmother's well. She didn't have the entire finger amputated, but she's missing the tip and the nail. In spite of all that, she's done pretty well for herself — for pity's sake, Pris killed a man with her thighs.

Galileo Galilei experienced a slight digital loss as well, but not while he was alive. Fellow Tuscan Antonio Francesco Gori stole the finger off of Galileo's corpse in 1737, as his body was being moved from a church closet to a mausoleum in the Basilica di Santa Croce. Over the years the deceased physicist's little wiggler found its way to the Institute and Museum of the History of Science in Florence, Italy; now you can gaze yourself through the glass and marble case at the middle finger of Galileo's right hand.

It looks like losing a finger or two isn't the end of the world, though it might impair one's ability to work toys from the mini-sized Smallest Transformers line. Shia, if you're still torn up inside over your crushed left pinky, don't fret — you could always regrow it.

James Doohan image from Mental Floss. Galileo Galilei's finger image from Istituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza. Shia LeBeouf image from Just Jared.

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]

LeBeouf, who was arresting on suspicion of drunk-driving following Sunday's accident, will miss "at least one month" of filming for Michael Bay's Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen following his surgery. His vehicle hit a truck and was flipped across the road in the early hours of the morning, before being rushed to hospital at 2:30am with injuries to his head, hand and left knee. Police have said that LeBeouf was not at fault for the accident, explaining that the other driver ran a red light.

The actor's absence will definitely affect the making of the movie, but not necessarily derail it entirely; Shia's plot thread is only one of many in the movie, and co-star Tyrese Gibson seemed entirely unconcerned about the accident when talking to MTV:

A month? He won't be in the hospital for a month. He just hurt his hand.

The schedule for the movie had an in-built buffer for the potential actors' strike, and so this isn't disasterous... yet. And who knows? Maybe surgeons found some way to insert some acting talent while they were operating.

LaBeouf to miss 'Transformers' filming [Digital Spy]

Talking to /Film, Caruso said that Warner Bros, the new owners of the rights to Brian K. Vaughan's Vertigo series about the death of the male gender and what happens afterwards, is very excited about the potential of the concept:

What happened is New Line [which optioned the comic] is now part of Warner Bros, and Warner Bros is now really high on the project. And Carl Ellsworth will probably be handing in a script to Warner Bros/New Line [real soon]... Warner Bros keeps saying ‘We need movies for 2010′ I’m like ‘We’re the movie!’

And, as we've reported before, Shia LeBeouf is still on track to play sole male survivor Yorick Brown:

I was talking to Shia [LaBeouf] about this yesterday when we were looping him, because he really wants to do it as well, I would like to prep this movie in October, and start shooting it by January... [Shia] wants to do it, I want to do it. I think we just need to worry about him being exhausted, so I told him, if I prep it in the fall and we start in January, that’s a nice big break.

As much as I may not be convinced by Shia in general, I have to admit that I think that he might work in the role, and find myself hoping that this project doesn't disappear into development hell as soon as we get our first adapted-from-a-comic bomb.

DJ Caruso’s Y: The Last Man in Summer 2010? [/Film]

LaBeouf has signed on to star in the upcoming adaptation of Glynn's novel, which centers around former coke addict and current copywriter Eddie Spinola's discovery of miracle drug MTD-48, which not only makes the user more charismatic and intelligent than before, but also contains some... well, homicidal side-effects. The movie version will be written by Hairspray's Leslie Dixon (No stranger to altered states, having written the remake of Freaky Friday) and directed by The Illusionist's Neil Burger. No word yet whether CGI will be required to make Shia charismatic.

Shia LeBeouf visits 'Dark Fields' [Variety]