Shoot For The Edit Site Update - Rosie Huntington-Whiteley Officially Confirmed and Filming in LA

This is it. Michael Bay's official website; Shoot For The Edit welcomed Rosie Huntington-Whiteley to the Transformers Franchise. With it, We are now fully confirmed about Miss Rosie's involvement in Transformers 3.

The site also talked about filming Transformers 3 in LA. This is what the news update read...

"Nelson here...

I would like for all you S4TE fans to welcome Rosie Huntington Whitely to the world of Transformers. As some of you might know, she's the new female lead in Transformers 3. She's worked with Michael before in his Victoria's Secret "A Thousand Fantasies" ad.

Director and executive producer Michael Bay has begun filming the third installment in the "Transformers" franchise in Los Angeles, where the production economy has been buffeted by the loss of such big studio features to other cities offering more generous film tax incentives.

The DreamWorks/Paramount Pictures production has been shooting on a sound stage at the former Spruce Goose Howard Hughes hangar at Playa Vista and will film exterior shots throughout the L.A. area over the next several weeks, including Long Beach, West Hollywood, Century City and Malibu.The first two "Transformers" movies were also shot heavily in Southern California, filming numerous scenes downtown and at Edwards Air Force Base in the Mojave Desert.

"Mike, [producer] Lorenzo [di Bonaventura] and I are all big fans of trying to keep as much of our production in L.A. as possible," said Bay's producing partner, Ian Bryce. "It's a big movie. All our stage work is being done here."

In all, six weeks of the 4 1/2 months of shooting will occur in the L.A. area, with the rest of the filming spread across Chicago, Detroit, Washington and Cape Canaveral, Fla., and a few foreign locales, including Russia and an undisclosed African country, Bryce said.

Bryce said the science-fiction action movie starring Shia LaBeouf, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley and Patrick Dempsey required more diverse locations than L.A. could offer, and also cited the advantages of "very attractive rebates" offered in Michigan and Illinois, which will also host the production for six weeks.

The picture, with an estimated production budget of at least $200 million and a local crew of nearly 500, would not qualify for California's new film incentive program, which is limited to movies with budgets of up to $75 million."

Thanks to TFW2005.