Cylinder: I bet you never realised this: originally, Steven Spielberg was attached to work with us as an executive producer!

Darlan: Yeah.  But he quit in the end, when we refused to let Michael Bay direct the first two chapters.

Michael quit because we wouldn't let him replace Forkley with Optimus Prime or fill every single panel with massive explosions.

Strictly speaking, we fired him because he was insisting on having Optimus Prime instead of Forkley and blowing up all the sets on the first day of filming.

We had nothing against Optimus, mind you, but the copyright issues were insurmountable.

And we paid a lot of money for those sets.

Oh, and there was the Edwin issue, wasn't there.

Oh dear, yes.

Bay wanted Edwin's character to be a gothy teenager with unsurmountable girlfriend issues.

Played by Shia LeBouf.  Edwin nearly quit over that, and we decided Edwin was more important than Michael Bay.

Bay and Spielberg both felt differently, and left us.

But I think we've done quite well without them, really.

Yeah.