Transformers 2: Wheels, Chevy Beat, Arcee Drivers, Rainn Wilson, PA Schedule and More
Posted on Monday, June 9th, 2008 by Peter Sciretta
With production in full swing, a lot of new information is coming out of Michael Bay’s Transformers 2. Instead of unloading massive amounts of posts, I’ve decided to consolidate the news a bit.
Could one of the new Transformers be a remote control truck? I’m not kidding. The autobot known as Wheels was spotted on the Udvar-Hazy Center set of Transformers 2. You can see the photo on the right. Could the remote control truck just be a stand in for a computer generated autobot? One thing is for sure, Wheels is very small. In the scene Sector 7 Agent Simmons (John Turturro) lets Wheels out of a box. [transformerslive]
Also spotted at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum set was an unnamed autobot which appears to have an alt mode of a Chevrolet Beat, a concept car which was unveiled it at the New York Auto Show in April. Find out ore about the care on WiReD.
Transformers 2 will start production in Philadelphia, PA today. Locations set for the coming week include: PECO Power Plant, the University of Pennsylvania, and Eastern State Penitentiary. You can read more about the college and jail scenes in our previous reports linked above. [philly]
It appears that Arcee is actually made up of multiple Can-Am Spyders (possibly three). The original concept drawing we posted on Friday was an early unused concept from the original film. Turns out that one of the reasons why Arcee didn’t make the cut was due to scale problems (check out the scale chart above). Turns out that one motorcycle in autobot mode is only a few feet taller than the average human character. Having two or three bikes form together couple give her a lot bigger scale. Seibertron was able to capture some of the hologram drivers which drive the Arcee Motorcycles on screen. The two Arcee drivers identified on the call sheet are, Jessie Graff (a stunt woman on Die Hard 4/The Dark Knight) and Melissa Hartman (stunts on Indiana Jones 4 / Battlestar Galactica)
Rainn Wilson confirmed to Collider that his role as Sam Witwicky’s (Shia LaBeouf) college professor is just a cameo: “Yeah, it’s pretty much a cameo; I’m just on it for a couple of days.”
The producers of Transformers 2 are looking for an experienced string quartet to cast for a scene in the movie. [heerycasting]
/Film reader Garrett T informs me that you can track Michael Bay’s Autobot jet on Flightaware.com.
