Why is all the press surrounding the new Transformers movie about Megan Fox, who isn’t even in the movie? Is this the studio’s plan?
—Junebug, Atlanta, via the inbox

It’s a delicious conspiracy theory, isn’t it? We imagine a smoky back room, filled with studio execs. They take a look at the final cut of Dark of the Moon, wail and moan as their eyes bleed out of their sockets, and then decide to market the whole mess by trashing franchise refugee Megan Fox.

So is this what happened? I asked around:

Likely, not.

Yes, by many accounts, this is not a good movie, even by blockbuster-sequel standards. It bows this week—but it’s gotten a stinky 39 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes. CNN is calling it “lousy,” Rolling Stone warns that viewers run the risk of “dying a little inside,” and my buddy Garth Franklin at Dark Horizons went so far as to say that watching the film was like “being urinated upon.” The biggest complaint: that despite all the exploding robots, the story is just empty. There is no there, there.

Still, it’s unlikely that the studio behind the film orchestrated its marketing campaign around trashing Megan Fox. Publicists are evil, but they’re not, I am told, that evil.

“I think that it’s a little too much of a conspiracy theory,” posits Rachel Hill, a former personal publicist and the current director of marketing at American World Pictures, which is about to shoot a new Danny Glover film.

“I doubt that anything like that would be formally approved by any studio,” Scott Donaton of the marketing group Ensemble agrees.

That said, don’t be shocked if the movie’s principle star, Shia LaBeouf, did think through his Fox-trashing in advance, Hill says.

“Did Shia have to answer those questions about him and Megan Fox?” Hill notes. “Was it necessary? Maybe he did it to raise his profile a bit.

“I’ve had clients in the past who, when scandals have come out, we didn’t deny things. In fact we kept the scandal going because it kept our clients in the public eye.”

Now that’s a fun conspiracy theory.

Josh speaks out about Megan and how everyone misses her on the set.

Uh, who could blame them?

Shia LaBeouf admits that he hooked up with Megan Fox while making the Transformers films — and he’s not sure whether or not his sexy costar was attached at the time to then-boyfriend Brian Austin Green, now her husband.

Nodding in the affirmative about a hookup with Fox, LaBeouf explains in a new Details mag interview, “Look, you’re on the set for six months, with someone who’s rooting to be attracted to you, and you’re rooting to be attracted to them.”

Without giving specific dates or details, the 25-year-old actor (now dating Hollywood stylist Karolyn Pho) continues of the fling: “I never understood the separation of work and life in that situation. But the time I spent with Megan was our own thing, and I think you can see the chemistry onscreen.”

When Details asks him about Fox’s status at the time with Green, he sputters. “I don’t know, man. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know,” he says, repeating “I don’t know” eight more times. “It was what it was.”

Fox, 25, wed on-and-off beau Green one year ago in Hawaii. She was famously replaced by Rosie Huntington-Whiteley for Transformers: Dark of the Moon, out next month. (Director Michael Bay and LaBeouf recently confirmed that Fox’s controversial comments about Bay, comparing him to Hitler, got her dropped from the franchise — at the direct order of executive producer Steven Spielberg.)

LaBeouf also opens up about other failed romantic entanglements. His one date with Hilary Duff was “probably the worst date either of us have ever had.”

He also fesses up to “philandering around” with former co-star Isabel Lucas. “It was sort of disastrous…Neither one of us, I think, were in love. Just sort of experimenting or whatever.”

On his ex-girlfriend Carey Mulligan, with whom he parted ways in October 2010: “I still love her…I think she’s a fu**ing awesome person and an incredible actress. We’re still pals. I wouldn’t take any of it back, and I don’t think she would either. It just ran its course.”

In the run-up to shooting Transformers: Dark of the Moon, Megan Fox told a British magazine that director Michael Bay “wants to be like Hitler on his sets” and that he’s “a nightmare to work for.”

A few months later, she got her walking papers. But it wasn’t Bay who made the call, the director says.

“She was in a different world, on her BlackBerry. You gotta stay focused,” Bay tells the July issue of GQ, on newsstands Tuesday. “And you know, the Hitler thing. Steven said, ‘Fire her right now.’ ”

He was referring to Steven Spielberg, one of the executive producers. Fellow Transformers star Shia LaBeouf says he agrees Fox went too far.

“Criticism is one thing,” he told the magazine. “Then there’s public name-calling, which turns into high school bashing. Which you can’t do. She started s—-talking our captain.”

Bay, however, says he was able to put the actress’s comments into perspective.

“I wasn’t hurt, because I know that’s just Megan,” he says. “Megan loves to get a response. And she does it in the wrong way. I’m sorry, Megan. I’m sorry I made you work 12 hours. I’m sorry that I’m making you show up on time. Movies are not always warm and fuzzy.”

For her part Fox, 25, who declined to comment for the story, said last year that she chose to bow out.

“It was her decision not to return. She wishes the franchise the best,” her reps told PEOPLE last year.

Regardless of their disagreements, Bay says the pair ended on decent terms.

“She sent me a text three months ago. She said, ‘I hope you’re doing well,’” he recounts. “I responded, ‘Who is this?’ She goes, ‘Megan, you dork!’ I said, ‘Oh, well, thank you, hope you’re well.’ When you’re days and months on a set, it’s like a family. You say rude things and you make up.”

Gallery Links:
> 2011 Maui Film Festival – June 15th- Portraits x06

Happy anniversary, Megan Fox and Brian Austin Green!

The two are celebrating their one-year this week with a trip to Hawaii.

So, what’s on the agenda to mark the big milestone? Read on to find out what Fox exclusively told me…

First up was last night’s opening of the Maui Film Festival, where Fox was honored with Iris Award for her work on the documentary Na Nai’a: Legend of Dolphins.

The couple, who were secretly married in Kona (about a 15-minute plane ride from Maui), will also swim with—you guessed it—dolphins. It’s not something Green was particularly interested in doing. “My husband is terrified of sharks but we’re going to do it anyway,” Fox told me. “Sharks don’t usually go where there are tons of dolphins so we can do it. I didn’t used to be [scared of sharks], but I am now because of him. His fear is so intense, it’s smothered me and now I’m afraid.”

Not so scary? They may renew their vows in the fall. “I didn’t think that I was into it until my relationship with Brian,” Fox admitted. “He’s very sensitive and very emotional. He’s a Cancer so he’s very all about feelings and relationships and he cries about everything. He’ll want to do it so I’ll do it for him.”

Before hitting the festival’s outdoor Celestial Cinema for the awards ceremony and a screening of Na Nai’a, Fox and Green along with his son, Kassius, hit the opening night party at Capiche restaurant. Olivia Wilde (who will be honored tonight and take part in a Q&A conducted by yours truly) was also there along with fellow honorees Andrew Garfield and Garrett Hedlund, and Garfield’s Social Network costar Max Minghella and his girlfriend, 127 Hours actress Kate Mara.

Actress Megan Fox attends the 2011 Maui Film Festival At Wailea on June 15, 2011 in Wailea, Hawaii.

Gallery Links:
> 2011 Maui Film Festival – Day 1- June 15th x47

Megan Fox famously feuded with Transformers director Michael Bay, once saying, “He wants to be like Hitler on his sets, and he is.”

Fox’s former costar Shia LaBeouf explains the actress, 25, struggled with the “sex-driven role” and bristled under suddenly being “told she was the sexiest woman in America.”

“She had a hard time accepting it,” LaBeouf, 24, tells the Los Angeles Times. “Mike films women in a way that appeals to a 16-year-old’s sexuality. It’s summer. It’s Michael’s style.”

LaBeouf, who admits Bay “lacks tact,” adds, “When Mike would ask [Fox] to do specific things, there was no time for fluffy talk. We’re on the run.”

But LaBeouf says it’s a different story for Rosie Huntington-Whitley, Fox’s replacement in the third installment of the action-packed flick.

“Rosie comes with this Victoria’s Secret background and she’s comfortable with it,” he says. “So she can get down with Mike’s way of working, and it makes the whole set vibe very different.”