More than meets the Eye

Voight Up For Transformers?

Jon Voight told SCI FI Wire that nothing is finalized, but it looks likely that he'll be joining the cast of director Michael Bay's upcoming big-budget Transformers: The Movie. "I'm playing this ... well, we haven't signed the papers yet," Voight said in an interview. "But it looks like I'm going to play the secretary of state."

Transformers: The Movie will star Shia LaBeouf (Constantine) as the unlikely hero, Sam, in a story based on the comic book, cartoon and Hasbro toy lines that were popular in the 1980s. The movie will center on the central saga of the Autobots vs. the Decepticons.

The film will mark Voight's second collaboration with Bay, following Pearl Harbor. The Oscar-winning actor, whose genre credits include the Manchurian Candidate update and Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, said that Transformers will no doubt be one of the largest-scale movies he's ever worked on, and he said he was intrigued by the notion of working on such an F/X-heavy feature.

"Well, of course, this one is going to have a lot of special effects, a lot of computer graphics and stuff like that, so it seems," Voight said. "So the actors will be tested. Their patience will be tested with lots of different things. But it's going to be interesting, too. When you do something like that—when you do a lot of computer graphics in a movie, lots of technical stuff—it's quite intriguing. It's a lot of fun, you know? It brings you back to your childhood, and you want to see how things work." Production on Transformers: The Movie is set to begin soon, with an eye toward a July 4, 2007, release date.