Oh yeah, even though I can’t write a full review yet I’ll say that the movie is the real deal – easily the best summer big budget movie I’ve seen and one that has the best action set pieces and effects. The movie is going to make so much money Paramount won’t know what to do with it.

“Transformers” opens July 3^rd.

Very Slight SPOILERS below.

I have to ask you, you’ve been approached to do a lot of action/adventure fanboy stuff, how early on do you guys start looking at the mythos of Transformers and how much of that did really play on final decision making of how the script came out?

I guess we were fans of the cartoons as kids. The minute we decided we were going to take this gig we got everything that’s ever been done by Hasbro. They sent us everything.  All the comics, all the cartoons, we went over it all. Learned it and then put it away.  The 2^nd part, how much did it influence?  Every reiteration has kind of a basic back-story and so it influences.  It’s part of the movie.  It’s a distillation and it’s definitely a summary in a way—the first movie.  But you can’t forget that stuff. It’s definitely in our sub-conscious. 

How long ago did you guys start writing this script and how many drafts did it take to get to the screenplay?

2 years ago we started, it’s so hard to count drafts, it was green lit on the 2^nd draft and then from there we kept improving it and improving it all the way through shooting it up until 4 weeks ago.  We were literally still writing robot dialogue 3 weeks ago. 

Obviously Michael had a lot of say to what the story is but Steven Spielberg’s office is supposedly very involved….

It’s not that obvious actually. We kind of had the template of the movie before Michael even read it. 

So how involved was Mr. Spielberg in the process?

He gave us the kernel of boy in his car when we first sat down to…he asked us to do the movie and we were prepared to say no because we were very worried about it.  It was going to be a giant toy commercial and everyone’s going to cynically approach this movie they’re going to say it’s a giant toy commercial etc etc.  We were like what is it?  Close Encounters we brought up to him and we were like Close Encounters is great it’s this great big alien movie but it’s really about a family falling apart.  It’s about a guy obsession and it destroys his family. So we were prepared to say we can’t do it unless we really see it.  He said here’s a human element, it’s a boy and his car and that’s all he had to say and that was enough for us to realize we couldn’t say no and so from that we extrapolated with the basic template of the paradigm and the structure of the movie is.  And he gave notes on every draft obviously. He was a truly involved producer.

How did you go from a boy and his car to that incredible story?

A part is also obviously there’s a rich history of the Transformers.  A fact that there’s this war that they have on their planet and all those characters are very much part of the things we know already so we didn’t have to invent too much of that but the boy and his car allows you to focus in on a point of view that allows you to discover the Transformers through the pace of the movie. A lot like Close Encounters in a way.  You’re slowly finding out there’s this phenomenon going on.  So starting from a boy and his car and allows us to realize what the pace and the structure of the movie was going to be and how the aliens were going to come into the movie and into the perception  of the humans.

How did you decide on the tone of the movie?

That was the hardest part.  Trial and error.  We knew it had to be infinitely more realistic than the cartoon yet not lose its sense of fun and those 2 things are actually at opposition.  So it was absolutely a tight rope walk.  That’s the whole ball game right there is the tone.

Did you make this movie with the intention of just setting up the next one?

No.  Our responsibility in our minds was to set up a good first movie or a good movie period knowing that no story is ever over.  You can think it’s over and they’re still going to make a sequel, so we weren’t too worried about what it’s going to be. 

The ending just seemed like a natural segue into what happens next.  I just didn’t know if that’s what you guys might have had the intention because there’s just so many more characters that you can involve from all the other….

We knew it was being left open but we weren’t like we must target all this and at the end there’s a sequel.  That was not our responsibility and we didn’t think of it in those terms.

You guys are writing some big ticket items.  Let’s talk about the big elephant in the room Star Trek, you know what I mean.  Do you guys read the online stuff?  Do you laugh about it?  Do you wonder how they get some of their information?  Let’s talk about Trek because that’s a big thing for a lot of people.

Alex has a harder time reading stuff on the net because he takes it very personally so I’m the designated new media contact and it’s everything.  You run the gamut. You read stuff and you go like oh, my God how did they get that?  Or you laugh you cry, everything. 

So let me ask you, you guys are involved with Trek?  How have you been researching that?  How has that been coming and I know you’re probably not going to be able to give us obviously story points but…

Luckily we’ve been researching that all our lives.  We’ve read the novels; we just had it down cold.  So when it came up again we were covered.  We have a green light draft. We finished it at Christmas. It’s going. It shoots in November.  We’re in the middle of casting right now.

When do you think we’re actually going to hear casting stuff?  Are you going to Comic-Con?  Is J.J. planning a big thing?

We might announce some stuff at Comic-Con.  We should have significant casting by then. 

As a follow up to that, I don’t know how involved you are to answer this but isn’t it hard to get established actors and stars to come in to a franchises where they’re playing iconic characters.  They are playing young versions of Kirk and Spock.

You mean to convince the stars or hard just from the creative point of view to want that?

To convince them…or both.

Actually I think it’s a little easier to convince established actors. The problem is you’re not sure you want them.  Like Superman, would that have worked with you know…

But wouldn’t that insinuate that if they’re not going for big stars that it’s therefore the same old Star Trek, won’t spend the money, won’t bring in the big names to make it happen?

No, we don’t insinuate that.  You mean….

No, I’m insinuating that but the fans might feel that way.  The whole idea of the re-launch of it is that bigger, better the Star Trek you’ve always wanted even as a re-boot.

I don’t think so. The star of the movie is Star Trek.  I think another way to think of it is we feel confident in what the material is and what the paradigm of the movie is that we’re not trying to shove an Academy Award winner down your throat to sell it, which doesn’t mean we may not end up there but it’s not our first place to go.

Were you going to elaborate on that thing about what big stars might take away from playing these iconic characters?

They become the story instead of the franchise.  It becomes a personality issue as opposed to really focusing on the movie. Stars in the right place might help it too.  We’re not ruling anything out at this point casting wise.

When you wrote the script, did you guys have a budget in mind or were you just sort of writing it big and hoping that you were going to get the budget?

Writing it big, had a budget in mind, very back of our minds thanks to our TV training oddly enough we’re pretty good at calling exactly what something is going to cost.  We told them what Transformers was going to cost before we wrote a word and we were within $3 million.

How much was that?

It was like $147, we said it’s going to be $150, that’s what it’s going to be and that’s pretty much what it was. 

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