Earlier this week, Viacom (parent company of Paramount Pictures) president and CEO Bob Bakish attended the 47th Annual J.P. Morgan Global Technology, Media and Communications Conference, to outline new achievements by the company.
Mr. Bakish stated that Transformers: Bumblebee did incredibly well even on the 2nd quarter of 2019. It may be due to the Home Release sales which are happening right now. He also highlighted the massive loss incurred by Transformers: The Last Knight and even going as far as ridiculing the movie by stating that the 5th movies was “a quote unquote – Transformers movie“.
“Even in 2019 [we] had strong performance from a series of titles. Bumblebee; which was the most recent Transformers movie is a great example of Jim [Gianopulos]’s ability to reset a franchise. The last “Transformers” film we probably lost over a $100 million. Bumblebee is a better movie: the story was better, the characters were better. It was done in a more fiscally responsible way and we’re making nice money on it.”
While he did not elaborate much regarding the future of the franchise, 2019 was told to be a quiet year for Paramount with majority of major films planned for 2020 and beyond; which starts this October. We do believe that if we hear something about the next Transformers movie, it would be around the final quarter of this year if not sooner.
BigRed
There's literally nothing to defend here, because your post barely constitutes a sane argument, but go ahead and smash that ignore button dude, nobody will be losing anything from seeing less conversations involving your "points" in the future if that brand of delusion is all you bring to a discussion.
YoungPrime
Wrong to who..? You?
Pfft! I wouldn't have even seen this post if I had logged in first. Debates are fine….I might disagree with someone in one thread while backing the same person in another (And vice versa). But in this case I don't normally converse with Toxic (Bay) fans AT ALL.
So I hope that YOU get off on being ignored. My point on this matter still stands!
Paramount's current overall struggles remain proof of this. Defend it all you want… Goodbye.
BigRed
This is a joke right? Are you… like… genuinely unaware of all mediatic history? Have you somehow not seen scrappy action heroes in the last 50 freaking years withing extremely popular movies? Have you failed to notice the past Bay films that made millions of dollars even with Bee still ripping things apart, in much less credible ways than Bee's smart fighting in the Bee movie?
Also lol at "one-sided fights" when all of his three major fights had more blow-trading than literally any conflict in the 80s film people hold gospel, with all three of them being won by Bee due to sheer cleverness. It's like you get off being wrong.
YoungPrime
To me, Bayformers in a nutshell is like corrupted bankers and politicians (Paramount and Hasbro) getting away with selling cocaine.
They know it's wrong on many levels but if people are buying it and they're getting paid then oh well…. "TLK" is when the DEA (Real TF Fans) came in and said "Enough is enough, we're putting Bay fans in rehab"!
Yeah, last I check Spider-man IS STRONGER THAN G1 BUMBLEBEE! So why wouldn't he be able to take out a few regular humans…..?
Ironically I recall an episode of Spider-man and his Amazing friends when Peter Parker lifted a Volkswagen Beetle (His ORIGIN EPISODE actually).
Since then he's been shown lifting larger cars and even buses. He's been a "20,000 pound" Level Marvel character (Thor, Hulk and Juggernaut being 80K to 100K+). So I swear some of you Bayformer Fans need to do more homework when defending poor battle scenes. And Bee taking out multiple Cons twice his size is not appealing to me.
Well Video games tend to get a pass but in this particular case, I never bought Devastation because I was never a fan of button mashing games. PS+ did eventually give it to us for free but I didn't even play through a 3rd of it. The boss fight of Bee vs Megatron was a huge turn off. And FYI I never used Bee in FOC/WFC while in Multiplayer either.
So try again.
YoungPrime
What is their next move if Knight is still doing other things?
Autobot Burnout
Baby steps. "Don't look a gift horse in the mouth" and all that – I mean, given what we know Bumblebee was supposed to be, the fact they switched tracks into a reboot with a more G1 slant shows they're receptive, finally, to more Transformers focused content.
electronic456
I think it was specifically TLK and the worn out formula. I didn't read this as 2007-2014 was a failure.
Its like saying the old God of War game series is a failure when really Ascension was borrowing too much from the old formula before God of War 2018 revitalised it.
When you're a bigger fan of Transformers than Marvel in the end. The little things like Bumblebee taking out 4 goons is enough to make you cry foul.
What about other superheroes when they face minions? Is someone as young as Spider-Man not supposed to take out that many thugs?
I guess that means playing games like Transformers Devastation are also inaccurate then for making Bumblebee playable and fight many Decepticon drones.
YoungPrime
I love replies like this….
It's like you're basically saying I'm right, but you don't care since there's enough progress for YOU to be content with after 10 years. Soooo as a result I should just shut up and go watch something else.
News Flash! That's all I do currently is watch G1 cartoons and the 86 animated movie. But mostly since the Siege line released and because the previous "IDW-verse" ended so poorly (and the reboot sounds boring). But I still felt a large portion of it (LL, MTMTE, -ations, LSOTW, Stormbringer, TAAO, etc) was BETTER THAN SUNBOW! So guess what? Just like a lot of MCU films, TF films have the potential to be better than its origin as well…
Paramount is still struggling, especially compared to Disney. They have access to a great franchise but fail to utilize it properly. Just like Fox who had X-men, F4 and Dare Devil, yet they still waved the white flag to Disney and Sony who has Spider-man still suffered greatly and only bounced back the last 2 years courtesy of piggybacking off of Marvel-Disney.
Point being is that TF films don't have to follow G1 to a "T" when making films (yes some of the what was in that cartoon was stupid). But in many cases it would help Paramount. Especially since films like Endgame and most of the 20+ films that it followed has risen the bar on quality when it comes to Action films in general.
Take that how you want but considering their current situation, I'm sure Paramount would mind receiving my time and money again and not just yours. So this is how they should do it IMO.
octobotimus
I mean sure, we can all complain about the BB movie that is clearly improving the franchise and just make the studio go "ooooh, so you do want bay?"
we are just happy we are getting actual progress after 10 years. You don't get Avengers endgame without the other 20 behind it, even if some were bad. This stuff takes time, and you have to be patient, or never be happy.
True G1 will never exist again, because its always going to be a new take on it in some way. If you want true G1, watch the 86 movie.
YoungPrime
Seriously..?
I'm sorry but other than the DESIGN of 2 G1-ish scenes that lasted about 6 minutes combined. That was even disappointing.
Giving Bee the Wolverine treatment is what's stopping like 20 other well known Autobots from getting any type of real shine. In the original G1 show I loved Bumblebee as a Scout who occasionally rised to the top and that's just to beat Con's like Ravage or Laserbeak (knocked Starscream down once to and even then Bee said "did I just do that"). But in that Spinoff movie he killed like 4 Seekers in less than 30 seconds…..
Sure the film was better than Bay's crap (which isn't that hard to do IMO) but to me, those overpowered, one sided fight scene's by Bee are the reason that Paramount's profits are only $20M instead of $200M after 10+ years. And that lame premise of still having no voice.
YoungPrime
I've been saying this for years now and all I got for my troubles is "Hater this…" and "Troll that"!
But with this being said, what's a 20M profit to a studio (Paramount) that's been about $450M in the red for like 4 years???!
It's why that desperate idiot Producer "Lorenzo di Bonaventura" was hoping that he could still milk off that Bay-verse crap despite Bee being listed as their highest quality TF film.
To me it sounds like his Job is at stake so he took a shot to see if the masses would allow Bay pt6 to rebound, because what else is at Paramount now that Bayformer's well has dried out?
HeroicC300
@SilverOptimus Looks like they got the message loud and clear with Bumblebee, making me hopeful that for the next movie it isn't the Optimus/Bumblebee buddy movie unless said movie is about them rounding up the Autobots who landed on earth.
However, I do hope that we find out what happened to 'Transformers Hall of Fame' member Lorenzo di Bonaventura after his spiral of confusion
TargetmasterJoe
I actually didn't realize that until you brought it up.
Could it be what I think it is…?
DarkRed401
i don't disagree, i guess my primary issue is less with the film and more with the people making it, a decent amount of movies spend a lot of money on terrible scripts, i dont like the idea of screenwriters just copying pasting stories while making probably just as much as those that try hard to make original ideas
TheSoundwave
Actually, I don't have a problem with that. The fact that Bumblebee had an ET-vibe was something that was praised about the movie. It helped the audience connect with it. When George Lucas made Star Wars back in the '70s, he intentionally based it on a story that had been done before. He was introducing so many new ideas and visuals, he probably figured it would be best to present them in a straightforward story that took inspiration from stuff the audience was already familiar with. I think the same tactic might be useful here. Giant robots are always going to be a bit challenging for audiences. Putting Transformers in familiar stories and situations could help audiences connect with them (at least until the audiences warm back up to the franchise).
DarkRed401
i think Travis mentioned both as inspiration but either way those 2 have a lot in common.
its hard to determine whats going on with lorenzo, he seems to make stuff up on a whim in interviews and yet he supposedly has a fair amount of creative control as a producer
Autobot Burnout
Lorenzo doesn't even know what he says half the time. Remember around the time TLK was released and he was blithering on about how Quintessa was actually originally a human…despite thus being human six billion years before humans even existed?
All he is trying to do is flail about and figure out how to use buzzwords of known quantity films to try and make people interested, regardless of what actually is the final product.
Also, Bumblebee was way more like Iron Giant than ET.
DarkRed401
now that i think about. i'm kind of concerned that paramount might get the wrong idea with this movies success, the movie is heavily based on et and lorenzo has mentioned that the sequel could be like lethal weaopn, i dont mind if they want to essential remake some 80s movie but with tfs but i really hope this won't be the case for most films going forward
TargetmasterJoe
That brightens my day.
See, that’s something that leaves me stumped. How can the footage from Cinemacon be considered positive when what we’ve seen is the opposite of that? Weren’t they the same footage?
SilverOptimus
Footage shown during Cinemacon 2019 received a massively positive reaction. With some refined CGI, the movie could work well.