Heroes star Masi Oka has signed on to exec produce The Defenders, a movie based on an idea he pitched himself, about MMORPGS.  I have no idea what that means.  (*grabs nerd by collar, demands answers*)  Okay, I’m told it stands for massively multiplayer online role-playing games.  Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman (Star Trek, Transformers) will produce, with DJ Caruso (Eagle Eye) in talks to direct and Gary Whitta (The Book of Eli) writing the script.

The story centers on a group of mostly teenagers from around the world who are involved in a multiplayer video game, each unaware of who they really are behind the cover of their consoles and avatars. They are forced to come together for a real adventure, becoming inadvertent heroes in the process.  DreamWorks will develop a video game simultaneously with the feature.  Oka came up with idea while playing MMORPGs.
“You can be whoever you want to be,” he said. “The question came to me: What if you had to live up to the person you created in the virtual world?” [THR]

So basically, how this went down was, Masi Oka was like, “I have an idea for a movie.”

And the other guys were like, “What’s it about?”

And Masi Oka was like, “It’s about guys playing video games.  I got the idea while I was playing a video game.”

And then the other guys were like, “Hmm, I like that idea.  Can it also be a video game?”

And then Masi Oka was like, “Yes, that’s a great idea.  I like playing video games.”    Because Hollywood is a glamorous place, you see.

Wow.  Sometimes I can’t believe how absurd my job is.  USA Today recently published a rundown of all the robots in Transformers.  And hey, why the hell not, here it is.

• Ravage – Cat/dolphin robot, used to spy on the Autobots and then transform into a cassette which played in Soundwave, who transformed into a walkman.  In the new version, he won’t transform into anything.  “In the spirit of ‘more than meets the eye,’ Ravage isn’t just lethal because of his sharp teeth,” says screenwriter Alex Kurtzman. “There’s actually another skill set Ravage has that didn’t exist before, so there’s going to be a surprise for fans.”   And Soundwave is now a space satellite.
• Jetfire – That’s the geezer robot with the cane.  “He’s old, craggy, forgetful … doesn’t work very well. Can’t transform very well, because he’s very geriatric. They get stuck with him a lot,” Bay says. “He knows the plan of the bad guys, but he forgets all the good parts of the plan.”   Plus he has that creepy “old robot smell.”
• Sideswipe – Red Lamborghini becomes (surprise) a GM car, a silver Corvette Stingray Concept car, to be precise.
• Jolt – a foot soldier and (soon-to-be-released) Chevy Volt hybrid.
• Acree – a hot-pink motorcycle to be driven by Megan Fox.  “Kurtzman and  Orci say she was in an early draft of the first movie. “But we felt we needed to win the audience over before asking for that suspension of disbelief: a feminine alien robot,” Kurtzman says.”  Yeah, good call.

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It doesn’t matter if JJ Abrams’ Star Trek is any good when it comes out May 8th – it already has huge buzz! Because we talk about it in the internet, you see.  And now the writing team of Robert Orci, Alex Kurtzman (the guys who wrote Transformers and The Island) and Damon Lindelof have signed up for a sequel.

“There’s obviously a lot of hubris involved in signing on to write a sequel of a movie that hasn’t even come out yet,” said Lindelof, co-creator with Abrams of ABC’s “Lost” who produced the upcoming “Trek” but did not contribute to Orci and Kurtzman’s screenplay. “But we’re so excited about the first one that we wanted to proceed.”
As for potential storylines, Kurtzman stressed that the writing team will wait to take a cue from fan reaction about which direction to go [Ed. Note: please don't.  Fans are idiots.].
“Obviously we discussed ideas, but we are waiting to see how audiences respond next month,” he said. “With a franchise rebirth, the first movie has to be about origin. But with a second, you have the opportunity to explore incredibly exciting things. We’ll be ambitious about what we’ll do.” [Variety]

Hmm, first film after franchise rebirth… I know!  We could call it Star Trek: The Afterbirth.  But I’m sure this will be great. Look how well Indiana Jones’ franchise rebirth went.