Apparently, the reports of friction between director Michael Bay and hot actress Megan Fox are true as, according to various reports, the actress will not be returning to star in Transformers 3. The studio supposedly did not pick up her option for the third film, which starts shooting this week in Los Angeles. Although, if you believe Fox, the decision to not to appear in the film was actually her’s.

If the studio really did make the decision and Fox is just covering, then I agree it still seems like an unusual move for the studio and director Bay to make, especially as the film has just begun production. To eliminate an actress from a franchise where she plays a pretty large part and is also the love interest is somewhat risky. In addition, previous reports had indicated that writer Ehren Kruger and Bay were planning on creating a ‘female nemesis’ for Fox’s character.

I guess you can forget about that as Bay and company now plan to take the story “in another direction,” and will cast a new love interest. Perhaps said love interest will be a female bad guy? Could be interesting.

But really, the stars of any Transformers film are the robots so what actors star in the film, even though the list has impressively grown for this film with the additions of John Malkovich, Frances McDormand and Patrick Dempsey, are not as important. To be honest, you could probably replace the entire cast with new people and as long as the robots were cool, which let’s face it they are, the movie would still make a ton of money.

Transformers 3 is filming now and will hit theaters, sans Megan Fox, on July 1st 2011.

I’m not sure if this news should be taken as good or bad, but it seems writers Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman are officially off Transformers 3.  The dynamic duo of writing are probably two of the biggest names in Hollywood scribe circles these days having penned the fist two Transformers movies and this past Summer’s Star Trek reboot.

When asked why they are leaving Orci stated: “The main reason we would move on is because we risk getting stale and comfortable. If you only sing one song for too long, you miss the opportunity to sing news songs. We’ll see.”

With the pairs departure all the writing duties at this point fall to Ehren Kruger along with whatever Michael Bay wants to contribute (more explosions!).  This may not be such a good thing as Kruger is attributed for adding a lot of the comedy to the scripts which I felt did a disservice to the overall tone and pace of the story.

Getting back to my good/bad comment above,  I think it’s both.  It’s bad in the sense if there was anything positive about either movie (of which there was little as far as I can tell) it probably came from these two writers.  It’s bad because without Kurtzman and Orci the third Transformers film can only go downhill from here.  Not that it has far to go to hit rock bottom.

On the flip side, this will certainly free up the pair’s time to work on the sequel to Star Trek and continue producing their hit show Fringe. Even in Kurtzman and Orci’s absence I’m certain the next Transformers installment will go onto make a load of cash which makes it even more surprising the two would make an exit.  That said, I have to respect them for turning down a huge payday in favor of their craft.  My hat is off to you both.

Transformers 3 hits theaters July 1, 2011.