Transformers Movie

THE "Transformers" concept is simple: In the blink of an eye, some innocuous thing -- a car, for instance -- morphs into an alien-whupping killing machine. Director Michael Bay has undergone his own transformation, and while it's hardly as dramatic as what happens in his new movie, his turnabout does suggest that he is about to have a much sunnier summer than his last time around. When Bay was previously putting the finishing touches on a summer movie, he wasn't having that grand a time.

As movie studios battle one another at the box office with their summer blockbusters, toy manufacturers that have hooked their fortunes to these films are facing a similar fight as they vie for the attention of young boys. Yet, with nine movies having toy-related items for sale during the three-month summer window, consumers could suffer from a form of attention deficit disorder.

All four of the Los Angeles Film Festival's theaters in Westwood Village took a break from screening documentaries and small coming-of-age stories Wednesday night to simultaneously premiere Michael Bay's "Transformers," a gigantic special-effects-heavy blockbuster made, as the opening credits announced, "in association with Hasbro."

SHIA LaBEOUF'S first day on the "Transformers" set nearly killed him. "We had these police guard dogs," says director Michael Bay, standing in the shadow of a truck loaded with Furby toys and rigged with 50 explosive devices in downtown Los Angeles. "I didn't know how dangerous they could be." "Thank God I'm really fast," LaBeouf says. "He's telling me, 'Don't worry. It's safe.' Action gets called. Attack dogs run, run, run, run! First take goes great. Second take goes great."

The fireworks start early when armies of robots go to war tonight on the big screen with the opening of the expected sci-fi hit "Transformers." But leading up to the Fourth of July-week release, the marketing troops at Paramount Pictures have been engaged in their own guerrilla war trying to get more than young males interested. The Michael Bay-directed film is based on shape-shifting characters from the popular 1980s toy line and cartoon TV series.

Though reviews have been less than kind to the human stars in Michael Bay's mega-budgeted Hasbro toy story, "Transformers," critics have raved over the realism and complexity of the computer graphically created Autobots and Decepticons. "None of us like phony baloney CG fake stuff," says Oscar-winning visual effects supervisor Scott Farrar ("Cocoon"). For far too long, says Farrar, CG effects' artists and audiences have been too accepting of unrealistic looking computer-rendered special effects.

The robots demolished the competition last week at the box office. But just how far can their metallic legs carry them? "Transformers," the DreamWorks-Paramount co-production about shape-shifting robots that bring their battle to Earth, has launched in the heart of a summer in which few films have displayed much box-office stamina. "Transformers" opened to $152.6 million in its first 6 1/2 days in the U.S. and Canada, Paramount Pictures estimated Sunday.

Strong earnings from the hit robot movie "Transformers" and the sale of a music-publishing business helped push Viacom Inc. to an 80% surge in third-quarter profit, the company reported Friday. At the same time, the media conglomerate acknowledged that the anticipated Writers Guild of America strike could put a crimp in some popular programming. Viacom, parent of cable TV's MTV Networks and the Paramount Pictures movie studio, reported quarterly net income of $641.