Love them or hate them, the Transformers live action films directed by Michael Bay bring in the money. In a report by Deadline, the fourth installment of the live action series, Age of Extinction, netted a profit of $250.2 million. That’s not total revenue (which was $1.09 billion) that’s an extra $250 million in the pockets of Paramount!
American Sniper came in at second place with $242.58 million, while The Lego Movie rounded out the top three with a profit of $229.008 million.
Be sure to read the full breakdown of the most valuable blockbusters on Deadline as many comic book focused movies made the list.
Ash from Carolina
There are times when stock sitting on retailer shelves can kill a line. Retailers got stuck with a crazy amount of toys from the first GI Joe movie and even though Hasbro made better figures after the movie line retailers didn't want to touch GI Joe because they thought the brand was toxic. Retailers got stuck with lots of 4" articulated action figures thanks to lines like the Iron Man movie toys and now retailers have shifted to the small figures having a shocking lack of articulation because they think they can sell cheap un-articulated junk better than the price point of nicely articulated figures.
Thankfully Transformers is such a strong brand that they can endure the occasional shelf warming line or wave. Fewer waves to the movie line might have helped to keep the amount of unsold toys for retailers to keep those retailers happy.
Raiju
*shrug* AOE's already made its money so what does Hasbro care if retailers still have stock laying around?
DOTM Deluxe Que/Wheeljack, Deluxe Leadfoot, Deluxe Soundwave, and Human Alliance Soundwave all say, "Hi!"
Who said that AOE was the *only* source of revenue for Hasbro? Nobody. AOE did, however, contribute to the pot so we can get our kickass Generations and MP figures, though. How much, who can say? But contribute it did. What's silly are folks who continually downplay or outright dismiss the positive benefits of the movies as if their movieverse toy shelfwarming anecdotes are completely representative of its impact to Hasbro's bottom line.
Autovolt 127
Ok that's pretty funny.
Autobot Burnout
I don't see why not. Don't books get turned into movies all the time? Plus, it's been argued in the past that the novelizations of ROTF and DOTM are far superior to the actual films despite often deviating to a moderate level by the end (I.E. Megatron kills The Fallen and manages to stay alive after he shoots Sentinel in the back) and having far more focus on the robots than the humans (I.E. Jetfire stomping Ransack to death, higher Autobot casualty counts in DOTM).
Movies are just audio-visual means of presenting a story. Novels are just using words to invoke the reader's imagination to illustrate how it presents a story. They're two means of accomplishing more or less the same thing. And on that level, they can be compared as so long as a simple story can make itself wildly entertaining that the audience is satisfied, whereas a story that has no coherency within itself to support a grander plot will leave that same audience confused or bored in light of failing to make the plot engaging in the first place.
Yes, actually. The success of the 2007 film led to Hasbro wanting to try out the idea of letting other "creative stewards" do a total brand reinvention and see if that would generate another success somewhere on the same level. Lauren Faust literally happened to be in Hasbro's offices around that time trying to pitch her Galaxy Girls show/toyline concept and while Hasbro turned it down, they instead offered her total command over the next iteration of My Little Pony. According to her, a critical aspect of the show would be to not make it the brain-rotting garbage that the previous iteration had been, thus sparing the adults forced to watch children's television by their children at the same time, going so far as to even make the show reasonably enjoyable for those same adults as well as the target audience. You could say it was a little too successful in that regard.
I'm pretty sure that's not at all how waves work, since the idea of "waves" is that it's condensing thousands of orders for toys into set groupings that are ordered in bulk. So, instead of having to order specific amounts of individual figures (which would be a logistical nightmare because retailers don't actually care about which characters are selling and which ones aren't if it's not Bumblebee or Optimus, they just care about the size classes and the MSRP they sell for) they can order a large number of one box package set "wave" that contains one or two packaged individual figures, with four different figures per box, so there's an implied variety of figures available with every wave. That's why shortpacked figures often become highly sought after when they're released as even if that particular figure sells well, the store isn't going to reorder the whole wave if the pegs are still stocked with a number of the other figures in that same wave (this was especially true for DOTM Space Case, who was practically a chase figure in how only one Space Case was packaged for seven other Movie 1 Jazz, Bumblebee, and Arcee repaints in the Target Exclusive DOTM deluxe wave 4)
CKPRIME
Ash from Carolina
Pretty much anything that made Hasbro a profit goes into other stuff. So I don't mind thanking Bronies, Nerf Nuts, Playskool Peps, or any other fandom that keeps Hasbro profitable enough to relaunch GI Joe.
I only bring up the point about selling because it seems like someone always tries to push a silly idea that the only reason we get more Generations figures is because of whatever cut Hasbro gets out of the live action movies. Even if the film series had flopped on the first film Hasbro would still be making whatever sort Transformers toys that were selling.
UltraAlanMagnus
That's what I did too.
Goaliebot
Pro-tip: The boards are much more enjoyable with guys like him on the ole' ignore list.
zark225
I see where you're trying to go with this, but GOTG had a very simple story, plot and stuff. Don't get me wrong, it was also told brilliantly, and GOTG is DEFINITELY the better film. To me, its tied with Winter Soldier, as best of 2014, but comparing it with writing is kind of meh.
Plus is it really THAT damn hard to not shit of the movies any chance you get?
TFfanatic88
Comparing GotG's writing to AoE's is like comparing Ernest Hemmingway to Stephanie Meyer.
vrba79
Bay haters gonna need some salve for that butt hurt.
Hollywood Hoist
The money a film makes goes to a lot of different places. Pay back the studio for the investment, pay for marketing, % deals producers/director/actors get, theaters get a chunk of the money that a movie brings in, Hasbro might get a piece, residuals.
Ephland
No disrespect, but your statement is as inaccurate as they come.
Autovolt 127
Don't we all?
Smashs
Bay and Walhberg are at $70 million and $32 million, respectively, putting both of them around the top 10-12 in their professions.
jestermon
The people not getting it.
It still spends the same.
This pandering thing is old, they made a movie and aimed it at an audience to make money, it makes perfect sense that a US/Chinese coop company has a Chinese manufacturing plant in China.
I guess they pandered to the US because they had US locations in the movie too.
YoungPrime
In real news…
Give it up for Marvel's GOTG and Cap 2 for for top Marvel movies of 2014
And LOL at Fox and Sony's fake Marvel crap.
Afterburner
Easy to make lots of profit when you aren't paying for a top director or actors.
Paradigm-Shift Prime
That's some valuable poop!
Funkmasterke
Well duh, AoE pandered to the Chinese market haaarrrrd. It was practically a chinese tourism ad.