"Mommy whats a cassette player?"
Posted on 07/14/2005 4:40:49 PM PDT by pcottraux
Independence Day for Transformers By Joal Ryan 2 hours, 56 minutes ago
Optimus Prime has a prime release date: The Fourth of July.
Transformers, the long-planned, live-action movie based on the robot-morphing cartoon, comic and toy franchise, will roll into theaters July 4, 2007, DreamWorks and Paramount Pictures announced Wednesday. Michael Bay (The Island, The Rock) will direct; Steven Spielberg will executive produce.
Children of the 1980s likely will be champing at the tie-in lunchbox.
"The diehard fans will like it as long as it stays true to Transformers roots and doesn't stray too far from the ideals that we grew up with," Brendan Reilly, co-Webmaster of The Transformers Archive (www.tfarchive.com), said in an email interview about the movie announcement. "The casual or un-familar fan will need to see something awesome to win them over, although a 40-foot robot is usually pretty cool."
Cool-looking robots who convert themselves into battle tanks and other vehicles in order blow up things real good are at the mechanical heart of the Transformers, the classic tale of good automaton (the Autobots) versus evil automaton (the Decepticons) in a battle for control of Earth. Optimus Prime is the leader of the Autobots; Megatron, the dark lord of the Decepticons. Both Autobots and Decepticons hail from the planet Cybertron. All this backstory and more was revealed in Transformers, the syndicated cartoon series launched in 1984 with the help of toy-maker Hasbro, which simultaneously--and savvily--launched a still-thriving merchandise line.
No less savvy today, the makers of the new Transformers movie have already begun a full-scale offensive. The new official Website (www.transformers.com) went up Tuesday. Transformers: Cybertron, the latest animated series, launched this month on Cartoon Network. Burger King cooks up a monthlong action-figure promotion beginning in August. And this weekend in San Diego, on the occasion of Comic-Con International, the geek world's largest annual gawkfest, an 18-wheel truck touting the franchise's considerable wares will be beached in the convention hall.
In theory then, this thing ain't going to be Transformers: The Movie.
Transformers: The Movie was the little-loved 1986 animated feature that gave Optimus Prime, Megatron, et al., their first crack at the silver screen. Much as Fox is planning to right past cinematic wrongs with an all-new, A-list take on He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, another 1980s cartoon/toy phenomenon that spawned a cheeseball 1980s film, the new Transformers crew is looking to take its property upscale.
In a message board Monday post on his personal Website (www.donmurphy.net), Don Murphy, a Transformers co-executive producer, said Spielberg, DreamWorks and Hasbro are committed to making a film that is no less than "GREAT" (the capital letters are all his).
"It will be GREAT," Murphy continued, "and then we will make sequel after sequel. There is no doubt that this is true."
With excellence promised, the powers that be now need only to lock in actors--none were announced Wednesday--and start cameras rolling. Time, after all, is of the essence. In publicly staking claim to July 4, 2007, DreamWorks and Paramount become the first studios to reserve that holiday date for their own. Currently, the only other release on the 2007 calendar is Spider-Man 3, set for May 4 of that year.
Until Transformers debuts in theaters, and after Comic-Con wraps, its considerable fandom can busy itself with BotCon (www.transformersclub.com/conventions/frisco/), described by organizer Brian Savage as being "like a giant group hug for everyone who enjoys Transformers."
Scheduled for Sept. 22-25 in Frisco, Texas, the latest edition of BotCon--the event is more than 10 years old--is expected to draw as many as 5,000 devotees of the shape-changing robots. "The whole movie announcement just adds more fire and fuel," said Savage, director of Hasbro's official Transformers Collectors Club.
The way Savage sees it, the unlikely secret to the Transformers' success is: Personality. Anyone, he said, can make a transforming robot.
"But guess what? It's not Optimus Prime."
Hollywood R.I.P
Why? Do you think Hitchcock would have directed a "transformers" movie?
Must mentally prepare self for the Hollywood annihilation of yet another innocent childhood fantasy...
HELL YEAH BABY!!! I wanna play "Starscream!"
I dunno - Dreamworks does some pretty good stuff - this has the potential to turn out ok.
Still, it's just more evidence that Hollywood is completely out of new material.
Yeah but Spielberg is producing, so Bay will be kept in line.
Personally, I think James Cameron should be directing.
The cool part about is that it starts out as a movie & then transforms into a play.
He wouldn't have directed "Armageddon," or at least not how it was done.
Well, Schwarzenkennedy is too busy screwing up CA so that leaves him out...and Stallone is pushing 60.
My guess then is Duane "The Rock" Johnson, Vin Diesel, LL Cool J,...
"Mommy whats a cassette player?"
Children of the 1980s likely will be champing at the tie-in lunchbox.
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That means me. I will be seeing this movie. Oh yes. There will be much rejoicing.
lol...the first time I ever heard of "Transformers" was after picking my son up at day care one day many years ago. He was about 3 years old and kept saying: "I want a chuckfarmer"...and i was like..we are farmers son..who is calling us chucks....lol. This went on for days...weeks..months..much like the "BIT BALL" (football)he wanted as well. Anyway...son(21) is in DC right now doing an internship through The Fund For American Studies. Great group of people and: "the best experience of his life so far" he says. Give them a look here and feel free to donate large sums of cash and send your children when the time is ripe. http://www.tfas.org/
Will do. All I need now is an appropriate wife.
"You've got the touch, you've got the POW-WER!" ;-)
Soundblaster was one of my favorite toys. I played the crap out of the cassette player. I wonder what happen to all of my G.I. Joes and Transformers, I think my evil Step Mother threw them out when I wasn't looking.
Hey, I've got that movie on my computer! I still love the first 10-15 minutes when all the old hat characters from the series are slaughtered by Megatron! That was soooo cool...
well..u will find "her", no doubt, in places of like minded souls...like Freepers. Good Luck.
I hope so. My last couple of girlfriends have been liberals I've turned to conservatism. But all that did was make them conservative kooks instead of liberal kooks, so I hadda take off! :D
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