Transformers 3 in the works

John Malkovich will star alongside Shia LaBeouf in Transformers 3 because of producers Lorenzo Di Bonaventura and Mark Vahradian — and the laughs.

“I’d seen the first ['Transformers'], which I liked and thought it was funny,” Malkovich says in an interview. “Lorenzo and Mark… approached me about it. I like working with them very much. They’re very good producers, they’re very hands-on, always around, really get their hands dirty — which is not so normal.”

“[Malkovich] is going to have a lot of interaction with Shia in that movie,” says Di Bonaventura. He and Vahradian have been working closely with the “Jonah Hex” actor on forthcoming action flick “Red” with Bruce Willis, which just wrapped shooting in New Orleans. “And he’s got a really fun character. And he’s going to bring a really interesting spin to that franchise, so it’s going to be great.”

Now that the “Transformers” films have proven to reap big box office benefits, Di Bonaventura isn’t worried about the budget or the timeline at which “Transformers 3″ is shot with director Michael Bay.

“[Producers] spend an inordinate amount of time explaining ourselves to people on every movie and all that,” but, “not with [Bay], y’know? Bay is such a general that it moves at his pace. The first movie, we had to explain a lot of why we wanted to spend this, what was going on…dah dah dah. They’re all running in a difficult time right now and they’re concerned about their careers and concerned about the results. I grew up in the Warner Brothers system and our philosophy was once we made our bet, we sort of stuck to it. Which meant it’s up to the filmmakers to deliver it.”

Malkovich will soon be seen in “Secretariat” and the aforementioned comic book movie “Jonah Hex” this year. He and his production company Mr. Mudd are also backing “Jeff Who Lives At Home,” a stoner comedy featuring Jason Segel and Ed Helms.

“It’s something that Jason Reitman developed. We did ‘Juno’ with him and he asked us to produce it,” Malkovich said of the film.