Hailee Steinfeld in ‘Bumblebee’
As noted by The Hollywood Reporter yesterday, Paramount/Viacom Inc. has pulled the seventh Transformers movie from its schedule. The untitled (and purely theoretical) follow-up to this Christmas’s Bumblebee (an 80’s-set prequel starring Hailee Steinfeld and directed by Travis Knight) was intended to come out on June 28, 2019. It was slotted there way back in Feb. of 2016 right as Paramount scheduled Transformers: The Last Knight for June 23, 2017 which caused WB to move Wonder Woman to June 1. Now the film does not exist, at least in terms of development and release schedules.
At the time, the presumption was that Transformers 5 (a sequel to a franchise whose last two films had each topped $1.1 billion worldwide and whose first sequel earned $837 million in 2D back in 2009) was stronger than DC’s Amazon Princess actioner. Two years later, Transformers has gone from Paramount’s crown jewel to a franchise facing… wait for it… an age of extinction. Since then, Wonder Woman came and conquered the month of June, 2017, legging a $103 million debut into a $413m domestic/$821m worldwide total.
Paramount’s Transformers: The Last Knight earned just $130 million domestic (compared to Age of Extinction‘s $240m in 2014 and Dark of the Moon‘s $353m in 2011). it earned just $605m worldwide, down 46% from Age of Extinction‘s $1.104b cume. Bumblee, a cheaper, presumably more kid-targeted prequel, was moved into the Christmas season.
That’s smart if it can be (relatively speaking) 2018’s Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle to whatever turns out to be the 2018 equivalent of The Last Jedi (Alita: Battle Angel? Aquaman? Mortal Engines?). Where the franchise goes after Bumblebee is an open question. Now if the prequel does gangbusters business, then perhaps the franchise will just reboot itself using Bumblebee as the starting point.
If it gets good reviews but merely okay box office, then the conversation is more complicated. Had X-Men: First Class performed better in 2011, that prequel likely would have doubled as a straight-up reboot. It earned rave reviews but middling ($346 million worldwide on a $160m budget) box office, so the next ensemble flick was a kind of Fast Five-type combo platter that merged the old cast and the new cast in the time-traveling Days of Future Past, which pushed the franchise above $700m worldwide for the first time.
But it if disappoints or outright flops, it will be very difficult for Hasbro justify going forward for any kind of reboot or revamp. And then the franchise that helped shape the modern blockbuster will be at least temporarily retired. Love it or hate it, Michael Bay’s first Transformers was a kind of groundbreaking blockbuster franchise offering.
Not only did it offer the kind of big-scale action not seen since Return of the King, but it offered a four-quadrant and nostalgia-driven appeal that hit the sweet spot. It was unique and trendsetting in that it was a kid flick aimed at adults, which seems to be a pattern for a lot of these IP revamps, be they successful (Jurassic World) or failed (Independence Day: Resurgence). Heck, Dark of the Moon had evil aliens destroying a major city for an extended action-blow out third act one year before The Avengers and two years before Man of Steel.
Now, these may not be positive legacies, you can partially look at the last decade’s worth of Hollywood chasing adolescent boys and nostalgic adult men (more than usual) as a reaction to the blow-out success of Bay’s first four Transformers films. Yes, it would be ironic if it were reborn as a female-led franchise. Or maybe Bumblebee is it, with Paramount understanding that no franchise lasts forever and Hasbro having the option to throw the characters into one of their other IP adaptations as a kind of bonus or added value element.
On paper, a kid-targeted “girl and her robot” coming-of-age adventure directed by the guy who made Kubo and the Two-Strings seems promising. We’ll see how it plays and how it performs by year’s end. With The Last Knight bombing and the “extended universe” writers’ room disbanded, Bumblebee has gone from an extension of a winning brand to potentially the last stand of cinema’s most popular rock-em/sock-em robots. Come what may, Transformers was some kind of a franchise.
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