Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. You know, I bet Ehren Kruger is a really nice guy. I'm sure he is. And I don't hate everything he has written, but ever since I read his butchered attempt to adapt THE TALISMAN I've kind of just given up on him as a source of decent work. It seems like he's a working screenwriter and there's nothing wrong with that, but his name on a project is akin to seeing Paul WS Anderson or Brett Ratner's name on a project... you know they're just standing in for the shareholders and suits at whatever studio is putting up the dough.

I love ARLINGTON ROAD and he did a great job with THE RING and everything else has either failed or has been mediocre, homogenized, dull.

Now he's in negotiations to join original scribes Alex Kurtzman and Robert Orci in writing the sequel to TRANSFORMERS, with Bay, LaBeouf and Spielberg all returning in their original roles as director, star and exec. producer respectively.

In this case, if Kruger's a stand-in for the studio means he's a vessel for Steven Spielberg to have more influence on the movie maybe that'll be a good thing.

Word is Kurtzman and Orci are busy with writing STAR TREK and producing EAGLE EYE (for DJ Caruso and Dreamworks), so Kruger is supposed to help shoulder the work of TRANSFORMERS 2.

I'm of the opinion that a sequel to TRANSFORMERS stands the chance of blowing away the original. We know the story, we know the characters, the original film was a huge success, so even more money can be dumped into the sequel giving us a chance to see some insane robot carnage. I hope the trio are able to inject a bit more character work now that there's less set-up involved. Even though I liked TRANSFORMERS, I will say that not every single thing has to be wink-wink, nudge-nudge at the camera, guys...

Thoughts?