Transformers scribes will answer your questions! Apparently Jon Voight was unavailable.

The bullet-train of hype for next year’s Transformers movie has cranked to life again today, in the form of a Yahoo! webcast in which the movie’s screenwriters Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman will be on hand to announce the names of the robots who will appear in the film.

Certainly this is good news for fans of the classic 80s cartoon series in which robots transform into common everyday….er….and they’re engaged in a classic struggle…and…

OH MY SWEET GEORGIA BROWN. ARE YOU SERIOUS? ARE THEY ACTUALLY HYPING THE MOVIE’S SCREENWRITERS?

Now please don’t misunderstand me. I’ve come to accept that Transformers is clearly a movie property of strong interest to a large segment of the moviegoing audience, even if I personally find the idea ridiculously, foolishly, insanely dumb. Oh, and it’s being directed by Michael Bay, whose directing and editing style cause me to search around for sharpened garden implements to stick, deeply and soothingly, into my left ear.

But this kind of hype is pretty unprecedented, isn’t it? When was the last time a genre screenwriter was hyped like this? To announce the character names of an upcoming movie? With all respect to the achievements of Orci and Kurtzman, a pair of young, clever and probably wildly fortunate guys with great agents, there’s not a lot of depth here.

I’ll be unable to attend the webcast, which will be taking place at 2:00 pm EST today, so I hope it goes swimmingly and that there will be a replay available, because I really am fascinated to see what nuggets of joy will be found when the Geekformers start chiming in with these guys. In fact, here’s a handful of questions that I would ask if I could attend:

• Does one even write dialogue in the screenplay of a Michael Bay movie when he’ll be cutting away from the characters 10 times within the span of each sentence?
• Is there a shorthand in your script for that shot where the camera swirls around the character from bottom to top - like “CUT TO: Bay Camera Move Alpha” or something like that?
• How many objects explode in your script by flying 20 times higher in the air than actual physics would allow? Do you write in the script that we see the same explosion four times from different angles?
• As writers, does it bother you that your director’s signature tagline - “Shoot for the edit” - reflects only a dedication to how the shots are composed and edited, not to character or story or drama?
• Does Optimus Prime have an emotionally sound character arc that pays off in the third act? How about Bumblebee?
• Is it true that big wads of money are the only thing that can fill the dark, empty pit of that place where you used to want to create relevant, original works of cinematic art that would be remembered for decades by your peers and audiences throughout the world?

See, now I’m bummed that I won’t get to see the webcast. But you can - just head over to the Yahoo! Transformers page and click “refresh” every 3 - 10 seconds for the next 4 hours or so.