A long time ago, the Transformers franchise under the leadership of Michael “Bayhem” Bay was one of the biggest releases in theaters. Transformers: Dark of the Moon and Age of Extinction went on to make billions at the box office but started to lose momentum with the release of The Last Knight and Bumblebee. While the latter was a fresh take and much closer to what fans hoped to see from this franchise, the franchise definitely lost quite a bit of momentum as it went on.
One could argue that the lack of Transformers branding could also have softened its opening, but it still managed to pull in $465M on a softer $102M production budget. The opening weekend at $21M had many concerned that this franchise might run out of steam, but that doesn’t mean production companies will try to keep a potential billion-dollar franchise dormant for long.
So, Transformers: Rise of the Beasts is the next attempt to revitalize the franchise by bringing back Optimus Prime and even introducing the more out-there concept of the Maximals. The promotion has not been shy about showcasing these characters that carry on the introduction of Lockjaw and the dinosaur-based Transformers while also re-introducing the classic characters in familiar designs closer to what Bumblebee offered.
Yet, it seems early projections aren’t looking too optimistic for the franchise return. Pre-sales at the moment are closer to underperformers like recent releases Shazam! Fury of the Gods and Morbius. Plus, the summer market is extremely stuffed (leaving its scars in the earlier quarter of the year) and may lead to quite a few films cannibalizing each other. June is quite a bit stuffed with Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse and The Flash, who shared very similar audiences.
As of now, the film is tracked for an opening somewhere between $30M and $40M. That would put it lower than 2017’s Transformers: The Last Knight which opened to $44M. Of course, it’s still an early projection and they might push the marketing quite a bit more the closer we get to release. The only issue is that this VFX-heavy release might be another $200M production investment that may not get paid off.
For now, we’ll have to keep a close eye as projections change but we might be seeing more and more that what some called a “superhero fatigue” is closer to a blockbuster fatigue. There are certain expectations in 2023 that are showing strong patience for streaming offerings due to how it was handled throughout the last few years. Last year seemed less impacted due to a limited release schedule but we’ll have to see how many films actually get lots in the shuffle.
Source: Box Office Pro, The Numbers
