JUNE 7, 2007—Shia LaBeouf doesn't have time to get the summertime blues.

Hot on the heels of the Rear Window-inspired Disturbia comes two potential summer blockbusters that could make LaBeouf one of Hollywood’s most sought-after young stars.

In the CG-animated Surf’s Up (June 8), LaBeouf voices a penguin desperate to become a champion surfer. He’ll then try to save mankind from malevolent shape-changing robots in Transformers (July 3), director Michael Bay’s big-budget attempt to turn the toy line into a film franchise.

During his March trip to Miami, LaBeouf shared his thoughts on:

Surf’s Up arriving so soon after Happy Feet
Look at the traits of animation. A Bug’s Life and Antz. Shark Tale and [Finding] Nemo. You can’t copy a movie. It’s not like we copied [Happy Feet]. These movies take four years to make. It’s impossible to copy. The fact that there’s so much penguin action right now is kinda weird. It’s like Kismet. But I think the reason for that is that the penguin is the most human bird. It kinda looks like they’re wearing tuxedos. They hang out in packs like humans, and they’re social birds. So there’s a fun thing to play with there. People like penguins. But again, animation is not a genre. It’s a type of film. Comparing us to Happy Feet is like comparing Rent to Spinal Tap. It’s two different genres. It’s the same type. Every movie made on 35mm is not the same film. Every movie made in animation is not the same film.

What separates Surf’s Up from other animated films
Surf’s Up is more dramatic than most animated films. There’s a really dramatic storyline. And it’s a mockumentary. The tagline is, “Based on a true story.” That’s our thing. It’s like set up like The Real World, where you have these interviews [in front of] the camera. It’s very human, so the comedy works in a different way. It’s not slapstick—chicken falls, scraps his leg, ha, ha, ha. It’s not that at all.

Growing up on Transformers
That’s the male Barbie of my generation. That and G.I. Joe.

What sets Transformers apart from his other big-budget endeavors, Constantine and I, Robot
For me, it’s a huge change. It’s the first one I’m starring in. I’m No. 1 on the call sheet. I, Robot, I was barely in. I was only there because Will [Smith] personally asked for me. It wasn’t like Transformers, where I’m a die-hard fanatic before I show up on set, where I can’t wait to see Bumblebee like the next guy. There are few franchises in general where you can walk into a tattoo shop and see someone get a Decepticons logo on their back. There are few followings that are that loyal. People are loyal to Transformers—my age, your age, it’s a huge generational gap. And the reason it’s different, when you think about a dude in a cape, a guy in a Spider-Man costume, they’re great ideas, historical ideas, but is it really tangible? Realistic? Is somebody really going to save me in a cape? Do you really want to be saved by that guy? Do I want him to hold me as we fly through the sky? No. Whereas something like Transformers, technology taking over humanity is a real idea. Look at the war now in Iraq, where we’re using robots to pick up bombs, we’re using robots to drop bombs. It’s all robotic. It’s like a realistic thought. Cars do transform. They transform into submarines. I went to JPL (The NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory) to look at some of this stuff on the Mars Rover mission. That thing is humongous. You don’t think it’s as big as it as, and it can do everything. It’s self-sustaining. It doesn’t need a recharge. These things have lives. So that blew my mind.

Transformers’ stressful shoot
It was tough. We shot it in 80 days. Pirates they shot in 340. To put it in perspective, Pirates has six or seven set pieces. In Hollywood talk, that’s big action sequences. We have 15 or 16. Eighty days is nothing. But [director] Michael Bay moves like a machine. The dude’s a monster.

Working with Transformers director Michael Bay
He’s a perfectionist. He’s completely prepared. He knows everybody’s job. He’s an adrenaline junkie. There are things he could have done on green screen. They hung me off of a building—the Orpheum Theatre—about 40 stories up. Then they blew the building up. You could have done that on green screen. But we didn’t do it that way. Mike doesn’t work that way. He likes to blow stuff up. He likes to build robots. He likes to make a bumblebee you can sit there and talk with for real. He’s a robot and he’s 40 feet tall.

The physical demands of making Transformers
I was running 20 miles a day it felt like. Every day was running and screaming, running and screaming, and running and screaming, and explosions. On Disturbia, we shot the car crash at the beginning of the movie in two or three days. A Transformers set moves like this: you’ll show up, you’ll do your hair and makeup, you’ll go to set, they’ll blow a car up, then they’ll light 25 guys on fire, they’ll drop a helicopter, they’ll blow up the Orpheum Theater, then they’ll have a robot walk the streets, they’ll shut the streets down, and they’ll blow the streets up. This is all before lunch with no rehearsal. It’s just a different set.

Transformers meeting audience expectations
It’s just a crazy movie, man. It’s just the sickest film of the year. I’ll put it to you like this way: Optimus’ arm has 15,000 moving pieces that all conjoin into a Rubik Cube-like arm. ILM, the company that did the graphics, did Pirates. ILM is the graphics king…. They said they never did anything like this. It’s going to do what The Matrix did for action films. It’s just going to blow people’s minds.

Surf's Up opened June 8. Click here for more information.

Click here to read Shia LaBeouf discuss Disturbia.