Capturing the Right Tone and Balancing the Approach to Transformers: “I think it's everybody's sort of internal barometer,” said di Bonaventura. “I personally can't take 32 foot-sized metal robots all that seriously. On the other hand, I take what they represent very seriously. So it's that sort of balance where you say to yourself, 'You know what? Let's not pretend we're making War and Peace.’ We're not. But people feel really passionate about what these Autobots and Decepticons stand for. There's a very rich mythology, so there's a real demand to deliver that. So for the non-fan of it, we had to have enough fun with it that they'd be entertained. And for the fan, we had to take it very seriously - what we were executing around the Autobots and the Decepticons.”
The Status of Transformers: The studio and filmmakers have been very careful about showing any footage from the film, but di Bonaventura says things are moving along just fine. “We were very proud of what we've seen so far of the movie and we thought it was time to show some people, so the hardcore fan base could relax a little bit. They're not relaxing a lot, but they've relaxed a little bit since we've put it out. It's a lot of fun. It's very true to these characters.
I think actually doing Transformers and Shooter are similar. When anybody's passionate about something, you have a certain responsibility to try to deliver what drove their passion. What is great on Transformers is that people have made a lot of assumptions about what they're going to look like. They're all wrong because we haven't even seen them, so I don't know what they think they've seen. There isn't a single visual effects shot that's finished in the movie yet. So what's great is that it's going to keep getting better and better.”
The Impending Release Date: Producer di Bonaventura isn’t nervous about the film being completely finished by the July 4th release date. “This was planned. We're right on schedule. So far everything has moved really sensationally. We finished on time, on budget, and our visual effects are coming in on schedule. They're just really complicated so they take a long time. We've seen the process so we've seen the evolution of a lot of the shots.”
Rumors of a Short Running Time: di Bonaventura says the rumors are wrong. “No, I think it'll be longer than people expect because it's very entertaining.”
On Bernie Mac's Cameo in Transformers: “He's insane in the movie. He's so insane I can't believe it.”
The Big Screen Adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s Stardust: Test screenings were recently held in Pasadena and the film received high scores from the audience, something di Bonaventura was actually surprised by. “It's a weird thing to say,” explained di Bonaventura. “I don't think everybody's going to love the movie because it's not a movie that's designed to be that. And yet, when we went and tested it, they really flipped for it. It just caught me off guard. It was a movie where I expected to have a larger portion of the audience sort of go, 'Well, that's sort of out there. Not sure it's for us.' And what happened was that we delivered, I think, a romance so spectacularly well. Matthew [Vaughn] did such a good job with it, that it caught a segment of the audience that I wasn't expecting.”
Don't Call Stardust a Fairy Tale: It's not just the studio that's leery of labeling the film a fairy tale. "We all have the same fear, which is when you use the word 'fairy tale,' it's interesting. We learned this from the focus groups. When we asked them to describe the movie to us and then they would give us a description and then we would say, 'What do you think if we'd describe it as a fairy tale?' They'd go, 'NOOO!' like that. Like, ‘Whoa!’ ‘Okay, all right, we're not going to call it that.’ It was really sort of an interesting thing because it's not a movie that fits into any simple genre. It is an adventure movie, it is a romance, it is fantasy. It is Neil Gaiman's bizarre world view. There's going to be some struggle for us to find a way to voice this thing...”
