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Transformers One’s underwhelming commercial performance continues the Transformers franchise’s gradual decline at the box office after seven years of financial disappointments. Transformers One marks the first time an animated Transformers film has been released in theaters since the series’ inaugural feature adaptation, The Transformers: The Movie, was released in 1986. The new animated movie is one of several projects to come out of the writers’ room that Paramount set up with the aim of turning Transformers into a Marvel-style cinematic universe, but that initiative still has yet to deliver a Marvel-sized box office success.
With Toy Story 4 director Josh Cooley at the helm and a star-studded voice cast including Chris Hemsworth, Scarlett Johansson, and Laurence Fishburne, Transformers One seemed to have everything going for it. It was a throwback to the old-school ‘80s cartoon and the original hard sci-fi approach to the franchise. With mostly positive reviews from critics and a relatively modest budget behind it, it should’ve been a hit. But it ended up being the latest in a long line of box office disappointments for the Transformers movie franchise.
Transformers One Is The Fourth Consecutive Transformers Movie To Decline At The Box Office
Since Transformers: Age Of Extinction, Each New Film Has Made Less Than The Last One
The box office underperformance of Transformers One continues a disappointing trend within the Transformers franchise that’s been seven years in the making. Ever since Transformers: Age of Extinction, every successive Transformers movie has grossed less than the previous one (via The Numbers). Michael Bay’s original Transformers movie from 2007 started the franchise on solid ground with a worldwide gross of $708,272,592. His first sequel, 2009’s Revenge of the Fallen, despite receiving much worse reviews, grossed even more with a global haul of $836,519,699, which set the series up for a bright future.
In 2011, the franchise broke the billion-dollar barrier with what is still its highest-grossing entry, Transformers: Dark of the Moon, which grossed $1,123,794,079. The next one, 2014’s Age of Extinction, suffered a slight drop-off, but it still crossed the billion-dollar threshold. It brought in around $19 million less than its predecessor for a worldwide total of $1,104,054,072. The franchise really started to go downhill with its next installment, 2017’s The Last Knight, which grossed $602,893,340. It still managed to make a profit on its $217 million production budget, but it was an almost 50% drop from the previous film’s numbers.
Transformers | $708,272,592 |
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen | $836,519,699 |
Transformers: Dark of the Moon | $1,123,794,079 |
Transformers: Age of Extinction | $1,104,054,072 |
Transformers: The Last Knight | $602,893,340 |
Bumblebee | $464,731,819 |
Transformers: Rise of the Beasts | $439,241,749 |
Transformers One | $127,824,330 |
After the underperformance of The Last Knight, Paramount began to move away from Bay-era Transformers and hoped to bring the franchise back to its roots with the lighthearted, ‘80s-set spin-off Bumblebee in 2018. But despite receiving better reviews than any previous Transformers movie — with many critics deeming it to be the first live-action Transformers film that was actually a genuinely good movie — Bumblebee still grossed less than The Last Knight, with a global total of $464,731,819. It had a significantly lower budget at $102 million, but it was still a far cry from the franchise’s blockbuster glory days.
After that, Paramount went back to sprawling, chaotic, Bay-style, world-is-at-stake Transformers movies with 2023’s Rise of the Beasts, which was met with mixed reviews. Rise of the Beasts grossed just $439,241,749, which wasn’t a huge drop-off from Bumblebee, but was still considered a disappointment — especially considering it cost almost twice as much as Bumblebee to produce, with a budget of $195 million. A year later, Paramount has released Transformers One, which has grossed just $127,824,330, making it the lowest-grossing Transformers movie since the original 1986 animation, which grossed a paltry $5,849,647.
Why Transformers Movies Have Been Struggling At The Box Office
There Are A Few Reasons For This: Franchise Fatigue, Negative Reviews, Stiff Competition
There are a couple of reasons why the Transformers franchise has been struggling at the box office for the past few movies. The excuse of franchise fatigue is often thrown around when Marvel movies underperform at the box office, but hits like Deadpool & Wolverine and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 have consistently proven that wrong. In the case of Transformers, franchise fatigue might actually be the case. Audiences had their fun with the first few movies, but when The Last Knight came along with the same old routine, they realized they’d had their fill of these shapeshifting cyborgs.
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Transformers One Box Office: Totals, Worldwide, Opening Explained
How much money has Transformers One made at the domestic and worldwide box office, and how does it compare to the rest of the movies in the franchise?
There’s a wide range of characters and genres explored in the Marvel Cinematic Universe — one movie could be a semi-grounded heist film, the next could be a space adventure — but there are only so many ways to spin alien robots that turn into cars. The Transformers movies have never received positive reviews, but that didn’t stop people from turning out for Revenge of the Fallen or Dark of the Moon. It could be that, in recent years, the market has become absurdly saturated, so audiences have a lot more options to choose from.
Transformers One Was Always Unlikely To Match The Live-Action Films At The Box Office
There's A Common Misconception That Animation Is Just For Kids
While its underwhelming gross of $127 million is certainly a surprise, since it’s an animated film, Transformers One was always expected to gross less than its live-action counterparts. There’s a common misconception that animation is just for children, so a lot of adult viewers with disposable income tend to avoid them in theaters (unless they have kids to entertain). The marketing seemed to lean into this expectation, as the trailers were targeted specifically at younger viewers, so it was never going to live up to the live-action films at the box office.
Even the Spider-Verse movies, which have been hailed as masterpieces and cultural landmarks, have both failed to make anywhere near as much as the worst-reviewed live-action Spider-Man films.
Other animated movies have been successful this year — Inside Out 2 and Despicable Me 4 are two of the highest-grossing films of 2024 — but they came from franchises that have always been aimed at kids. The Wild Robot, which outgrossed Transformers One, is adapted from a popular children’s book series. With Transformers One, the Transformers franchise was essentially going after a whole new audience than before. Even the Spider-Verse movies, which have been hailed as masterpieces and cultural landmarks, have both failed to make anywhere near as much as the worst-reviewed live-action Spider-Man films.
What Transformers One's Box Office Performance Means For The Future
Transformers One Probably Won't Get A Sequel
The box office disappointment of Transformers One probably means it won’t get a sequel. The same thing probably happened with the planned Rise of the Beasts sequel after that movie similarly underperformed at the box office. Blue Beetle’s Ángel Manuel Soto is working on a standalone Transformers movie and the G.I. Joe crossover is definitely happening, so it won’t stop the franchise dead. But it could cause Paramount to rethink its plans for the series’ future.
Source: The Numbers
Transformers One is an animated action-adventure movie that marks the first animated feature-length film for the series in decades. The film will be a prequel to the franchise, and will tell the story of Optimus Prime and Megatron in their early years, how they met, and a closer look at the war on their home planet, Cybertron.
Director Josh Cooley
Runtime 104 Minutes
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English (US) ·