Peter Cullen is Optimus Prime

Wow, I got so excited over this one over the weekend, I completely forgot to post it here.
The short story is this: Peter Cullen, the voice behind the original Optimus Prime in the 1984-88 Transformers animated series, has been cast as Optimus Prime once again in the forthcoming movie from Dreamworks.
The long story from producer Don Murphy:

the Cullen thing. As you all know when we started this grand experiment two years ago, Cullen and Welker were the ONLY Thing you gave me any consensus on. I’m serious, because I read everything you write, no matter how shitty. And if someone suggested something, half of you would shout it down. And the ONLY thing you overwhelmingly agreed on was that Prime should sound like Prime and Megatron should sound like Megatron. Which makes sense, especially since both actors are alive and well.

So I pushed your agenda. As some of you know, that was not an easy one. My own partner advocated celebrity voices. Then I showed him the results of your guys’ input and he immediately joined the bandwagon. Ian Bryce came to the show well in to the process and saw the results and supported immediately. John Rogers needed no prodding god bless his pointed head. One or two Dreamworks executives also supported from relatively early on. The interesting thing is that the director never gave an opinion any way. He had a lot of us telling him that there was no choice, really, the fans had spoken. But he had Skorponok and a lot of people at Dreamworks and Paramount FIGHTING actively not to do it. The forces of Cullen kept the push going.

Several weeks he came in and auditioned, which was all anyone could ask the director to do. Then he came back for a meeting. And now, Optimus Prime has his voice back. And there is much rejoicing. I now have people that really don’t like me because of this. But as we learned in this week’s sudden purge at Disney, it is the movie that counts. I have never cared if I was liked- all that anyone remembers is the film. And 14 years later I am still making movies… before you negativists start asking wotup with Welker, hey we are all working on it. Fact is I was told he was harder to arrange audition time with and his schedule— hell I don’t know. No one wants Cullen without Welker. I will not say that the director has made the decision because he hasn’t.

But you see this particular director is one of the most amazing I’ve ever seen work. One day he was shooting on a big city street- five cameras going at once. He set every shot up. He set the extras, hell he OPERATED one of the cameras. My gut tells me that Michael Bay weighs every decision QUITE STRONGLY. You have to remember that. HE finally okayed Cullen once HE was convinced. And should Welker happen, as I know everyone hopes, it will happen when he can make the decision. Which, quite frankly, is not an urgent decision to make at this moment. Hang tight….

Encouraging words.

Finally, hear Cullen voice Prime for the first time in many years at ComicCon from a panel with Producer Lorenzo Di Bonaventura:
“I am Optimus Prime… Transformers, roll out!”