Transformers might wish it were in better shape.Heading into the weekend, Paramount and Hasbro’s Transformers: The Last Knight looks to be the latest blockbuster to bank on overseas earnings.
ForeignEditorial
Made on a budget of 217 million dollars, the film is banking on overseas earnings instead of domestic figures.
Variety.com
Transformers might wish it were in better shape.
Heading into the weekend, Paramount and Hasbro’s Transformers: The Last Knight looks to be the latest blockbuster to bank on overseas earnings.
From domestic screens, it’s tracking to earn about 70 million dollars during its five-day opening, which is the lowest opening for a Transformers movie since the 2007 film kicked off the modern franchise with 70.5 million dollars. The reported production budget for this latest installment was 217 million dollars.
The last Transformers movie, 2014’s Age of Extinction, opened with 100 million dollars in North America. The four previous installments have accounted for over 1.3 billion dollars domestically and over 3.7 billion dollars globally.
The Last Knight could shape up similarly to Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, which opened to 63 million dollars, or the lowest domestic opening for a Pirates movie since 2003’s Curse of the Black Pearl. Over 500 million dollars so far in international grosses have saved Dead Men Tell No Tales. The Last Knight should hope for the same. Paramount also touts the Transformers franchise’s historically solid multiples — past films have made three to four times their domestic openings by the end of their runs.
The movie, which focuses on a war between humans and Transformers, will launch in 546 locations in the U.S in 3D Imax and RealD large format showings, before it expands to 3,000 an hour later. By the middle of the week, it will be shown in all 3,800 spots.
Overseas, The Last Knight will open in 42 markets on Friday. That’s 80 per cent of the film’s foreign footprint, including China, the U.K., Russia, and Korea. The rest of the international rollout will begin later in June through early August.
Michael Bay returns to direct the fifth Transformers movie since 2007 from a script written by Art Marcum, Matt Holloway, and Ken Nolan. Those three plus Akiva Goldsman have story credits. The cast is led by Mark Wahlberg, Josh Duhamel, Anthony Hopkins, Laura Haddock, Jerrod Carmichael, Isabela Moner, and Santiago Cabrera. Reviews for the film will not be released until later.
The Last Knight will go mostly uncontested at the box office this weekend. The only other movies opening are indies, including Sofia Coppola’s remake of The Beguiled and Kumail Nanjiani’s Sundance breakout The Big Sick.
