The TRANSFORMERS franchise has always managed to clean up at the box-office, but it seems that audiences may have finally grown tired of Michael Bay's endless parade of giant robots and explosions. Last year's TRANSFORMERS: THE LAST KNIGHT still brought in a good chunk of change, but its box-office take was considerably lower than all of the other films in the franchise, amounting to just $604 million. When compared to TRANSFORMERS: AGE OF EXTINCTION's $1.10 billion, that's quite the drop. Paramount Pictures has obviously taken notice of this, and according to Transformer World, they may be rebooting the entire franchise in order to right the ship.
During Hasbro’s investor preview for the 2018 New York Toy Fair, Hasbro stated that "a new team at Paramount will reset the Transformers Live Action Movie Series following the release of Bumblebee: The Movie." It also seems that TRANSFORMERS 6, which was to be a direct sequel to THE LAST KNIGHT and slated to premiere next June, has been removed from the schedule, leaving no live-action TRANSFORMERS films on Paramount's slate following the release of BUMBLEBEE: THE MOVIE. Transformer World also adds that there's a new agreement between Paramount and Hasbro which will find the former receiving greater creative control of the movies, including greenlighting projects. There's no official word on this just yet, but a reboot of the TRANSFORMERS franchise would certainly be welcomed, at least by myself.
Before that potential TRANSFORMERS reset, the next film in the franchise will be BUMBLEBEE: THE MOVIE, which stars Hailee Steinfeld and John Cena and takes place in 1987. The film will find Bumblebee forced to hide out in a small Californian beach town junkyard, which is where he meets Charlie (Steinfeld), a young woman on the cusp of turning 18 who is trying to find her place in the world. When Charlie revives the battle-scarred and broken Bumblebee, she quickly learns this is no ordinary, yellow VW bug. Director Travis Knight has previously said that he "wanted to approach this massive, expansive franchise and really focus in on a tiny corner of the canvas. Everything I’ve tried to do at Laika, searching for an artful blend of darkness and light, intensity and warmth, humour and heart, I wanted to bring to the Transformers franchise."
BUMBLEBEE will hit theaters on December 21, 2018.
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