>>10320791The story is a bit muddy. Welker had originally auditioned for the role of Megatron in the 2007 movie. However, Michael Bay deemed his voice too light for the character, feeling it would be disrespectful to ask him to change it. But both men have claimed to never meet during the 2007 casting, meaning Bay likely just heard the old cartoon voice and didn't think it would work, also meaning that if Welker did do an audition, Bay never heard it. This gets muddier with accounts of Peter Cullen during his first audition pointing MB to Welker
> So I said, ‘Well, I’d like to do a take of Ironhide, too.’ Michael looked up and said, ‘You can do that?’ I said, ‘Yeah, all the time. Frank Welker, one of the great voice actors of all time, he’d do Megatron and like five other voices. So we always ended up talking to ourselves.”So Bay had some understating these guys had range, it's just a question of if all account are right, why was Welker bowed out? Was his take that bad? Was it ever heard? Did Bay already have Hugo's voice in his mind?
Honestly the first live action film was a real mess on info and it almost turns into a believe what you want too.