by Benjamin Haines » Mon Jul 31, 2017 11:33 pm
Remember how Warner Bros. originally scheduled Godzilla 2 for June 8, 2018 before Paramount muscled in on the date with Transformers 6? WB eventually fled the date and moved Godzilla 2 to March 22, 2019.
Well, Paramount just went and abandoned that June 2018 release date. According to , they've now pushed Bumblebee to December 21, 2018, the same day as WB's Aquaman.
When WB moved Godzilla 2 away from Transformers 6 in early 2016, they had every reason to believe that it was a necessary move. The live-action Transformers film series had been a box office mega-heavyweight from the beginning and both the third and fourth films grossed over $1 billion worldwide in 2011 and 2014. The irony, beyond the fact that both WB and Paramount ended up vacating that June 2018 release date, is that we're now at a point where the Monsterverse is arguably a stronger, healthier franchise than Transformers.
The Transformers films peaked in North America with the second entry, Revenge of the Fallen, which made a mammoth $402 million domestic in 2009 without even playing in 3-D. The domestic returns have been declining substantially since then, although $352m for Dark of the Moon and $245m for Age of Extinction were both still very successful results. Plus, the series rode the wave of rapid international box office expansion that began about a decade ago and parlayed it into bigger foreign returns with each entry, particularly in China, where the fourth film remains one of the highest-grossing movies ever.
But just as the Transformers films peaked with part two in North America, part four proved to be the high watermark in China and the rest of the world. This summer's Transformers: The Last Knight has sold than its predecessors. It's currently sitting at just $128m in North America, a figure which the first film eclipsed during its first week of play ten years ago. Moreover, it's currently at $440m international with only Spain, Israel, and Japan left to open. It's not going to come anywhere close to the $858m international total of Age of Extinction or even the $771m international for Dark of the Moon. More than half of that $440m international has come from China, where its $228m haul represents a big decline from the $320m earned by the previous film in that country. It's also hugely frontloaded with the movie having made $125m in China by the end of its opening weekend.
Conversely, Kong: Skull Island just made $168m in North America, compared to a final domestic total of (at most) $132m for Transformers: The Last Knight. Skull Island has also outperformed The Last Knight in most international territories with the biggest exception being China, although Kong's $168m Chinese total from a $71m debut weekend is a stronger show of staying power than the frontloaded Transformers 5. Skull Island has also managed to outperform Godzilla in a number of countries, including China, indicating that the Monsterverse is on the upswing in terms of audience reception.
Both Godzilla: King of the Monsters and especially Godzilla vs. Kong have the potential to build on the success of their predecessors, whereas the next Transformers movie is all but certain to continue the series' downward box office trajectory. Warner Bros.' Monsterverse no longer needs to fear competition from Paramount's Transformers series. The shoe is on the other foot now.