Quote:Optimus Prime has a prime release date: The Fourth of July.

Transformers, the long-planned, live-action movie based on the robot-morphing cartoon, comic and toy franchise, will roll into theaters July 4, 2007, DreamWorks and Paramount Pictures announced Wednesday.    Michael Bay (The Island, The Rock) will direct;    Steven Spielberg will executive produce.


Children of the 1980s likely will be champing at the tie-in lunchbox.


"The diehard fans will like it as long as it stays true to Transformers roots and doesn't stray too far from the ideals that we grew up with," Brendan Reilly, co-Webmaster of The Transformers Archive (www.tfarchive.com), said in an email interview about the movie announcement. "The casual or un-familar fan will need to see something awesome to win them over, although a 40-foot robot is usually pretty cool."


Cool-looking robots who convert themselves into battle tanks and other vehicles in order blow up things real good are at the mechanical heart of the Transformers, the classic tale of good automaton (the Autobots) versus evil automaton (the Decepticons) in a battle for control of Earth. Optimus Prime is the leader of the Autobots; Megatron, the dark lord of the Decepticons. Both Autobots and Decepticons hail from the planet Cybertron. All this backstory and more was revealed in Transformers, the syndicated cartoon series launched in 1984 with the help of toy-maker Hasbro, which simultaneously--and savvily--launched a still-thriving merchandise line.


No less savvy today, the makers of the new Transformers movie have already begun a full-scale offensive. The new official Website ( www.transformers.com ) went up Tuesday. Transformers: Cybertron, the latest animated series, launched this month on Cartoon Network. Burger King cooks up a monthlong action-figure promotion beginning in August. And this weekend in San Diego, on the occasion of Comic-Con International, the geek world's largest annual gawkfest, an 18-wheel truck touting the franchise's considerable wares will be beached in the convention hall.


In theory then, this thing ain't going to be Transformers: The Movie.


Transformers: The Movie was the little-loved 1986 animated feature that gave Optimus Prime, Megatron, et al., their first crack at the silver screen. Much as Fox is planning to right past cinematic wrongs with an all-new, A-list take on He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, another 1980s cartoon/toy phenomenon that spawned a cheeseball 1980s film, the new Transformers crew is looking to take its property upscale.


In a message board Monday post on his personal Website (www.donmurphy.net), Don Murphy, a Transformers co-executive producer, said Spielberg, DreamWorks and Hasbro are committed to making a film that is no less than "GREAT" (the capital letters are all his).


"It will be GREAT," Murphy continued, "and then we will make sequel after sequel. There is no doubt that this is true."


With excellence promised, the powers that be now need only to lock in actors--none were announced Wednesday--and start cameras rolling. Time, after all, is of the essence. In publicly staking claim to July 4, 2007, DreamWorks and Paramount become the first studios to reserve that holiday date for their own. Currently, the only other release on the 2007 calendar is Spider-Man 3, set for May 4 of that year.


Until Transformers debuts in theaters, and after Comic-Con wraps, its considerable fandom can busy itself with BotCon (www.transformersclub.com/conventions/frisco/), described by organizer Brian Savage as being "like a giant group hug for everyone who enjoys Transformers."


Scheduled for Sept. 22-25 in Frisco, Texas, the latest edition of BotCon--the event is more than 10 years old--is expected to draw as many as 5,000 devotees of the shape-changing robots. "The whole movie announcement just adds more fire and fuel," said Savage, director of Hasbro's official Transformers Collectors Club.


The way Savage sees it, the unlikely secret to the Transformers' success is: Personality. Anyone, he said, can make a transforming robot.


"But guess what? It's not Optimus Prime."