The $700 million that TRANSFORMERS made last year’s most financially successful studio is burning a hole in Paramount’s pocket and they itching to get started on a sequel, something that director Michael Bay was pushing the studio to do late last year.

Infact, he was almost blackmailing them to go with it as he toyed with taking on Disney’s PRINCE OF PERSIA gig,  a job which eventually went to Mike Newell as a TRANSFORMERS sequel looked to be a go.

The problem still plaguing TRANSFORMERS 2 are the two strikes, as a script isn’t completed yet and the longer the pen can’t be put onto paper, the less likely the movie will be completed by the end of June/beginning of July when the actor’s and director’s strikes will kick in.

Producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura has told IESB that Paramount are still hoping that the film will roll on June 2nd, with a theatrical release 12 months later still locked in stone.

Seems ambitious to be, but I guess they don’t care about taking time to write something of worth and as long as it has robots in it… fanboys will see it.

Here’s the update from Bonaventura…

We’re no where because of the strike, we won’t know until we come back. We have a very fine outline and we know exactly where we want go with the movie but until this writers strike comes back, we’ll find out exactly where we are. Michael is completely on top of every detail. He’s designed a lot of great stuff already. He’s got a lot of great sequences imagined but you know, he needs some writers to work with before he’s ready to go, so I would say June 2nd is an unofficial start, it’s the target date we’d like to go for but, you know, we’ve got to get some writers to help us.