Hugo Weaving voices Megatron for the paycheck

by Liam on February 15, 2010 · 5 comments

transformers megatron It’s well known that actors enjoy voice work. In exchange for their name and a few hours in a sound booth they receive a nice tidy sum that goes straight into their bank account. They don’t have to spend hours in costume and make-up, and if Hugo Weaving’s experience is anything to go by, they don’t even have to deal with directors. Not in person anyway.

Weaving spoke to The Age recently about his work on the Transformers franchise voicing Megatron, and he was surprisingly honest about how little interest he has in the films:

“Oh no,” he barks with a laugh. “They’re not making Transformers III, are they?” Given that Transformers II made $800 million, they’re probably going to have to.

“[Director] Michael Bay talks to me on the phone. I’ve never met him. We were doing the voice for the second one and I still hadn’t seen the first one. I still didn’t really know who the characters were and I didn’t know what anything was. It’s a voice job, for sure, and people assume I’ve spent my life working on it, but I really know so little about it.”

I suppose it’s not written in his contract that he has to see the films. Big films with big explosions probably aren’t his thing, although if I were him I’d see the films simply out of curiosity.

From what I remember Megatron was still around at the end of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, so Weaving and his vocal cords will probably be required for Transformers 3, which begins filming in June.

  • http://cronopio.tumblr.com/ glass

    hahaha just like Orson Welles doing the voice for Unicron in “Transformers: The Movie” he didnt care a bit.

  • Lockdown

    One thing is for sure. His voice-over performance is absolutely fantastic in the Transformers movies. I´m a fan of Hugo Weaver practically since the Matrix movies, and I´ll say this, it would have been nice to hear Hugo Weaver saying that he has a lot of interest in the Transformers movies, and that he would really much like to return back for the voice-over for Megatron in Transformers 3.

  • http://trippman.blogspot.com/ trippman

    God do I love everything about this Transformers series. It just seems to embody everything that is evil in the movie industry. Actors don't give a shit about what they're working on; director has no values and puts so much work into his stupidity; the movie itself is exploitation to the max. I wouldn't give up these TF movies for the world.

  • ElseHarbeau

    Given how unrelentingly awful the Transformers films are, why is everyone being so cynical about Hugo Weaving's minimal participation? He has never said he did it for the money… in fact Weaving does many voiceover roles (and narrates several documentaries) every year… most of these projects aren't big paycheck items. Nor are the independent films and plays Weaving prefers to work on. If he was really the sort to sell out easily, wouldn't he have done so much more spectacularly following the Matrix's success? Instead he turned down most of the roles he was offered. I don't think the voice cast in Transformers made millions of dollars. Hugo typically works very hard on roles that don't earn very much, in criminally underseen films. I'm not going to give him a hard time for taking a bit of Michael Bay's money to goof around in a recording studio for a couple of hours. And the fact that he hasn't seen the TF films just means he has taste.

  • Mitch

    Hilarious. And the voicework is so generic; they really just wanted his name in the credits.

    That faint popping sound you just heard was Frank Welker's head exploding.