Box office preview: ‘Transformers One’ returns the popular Hasbro toy line to the animated realm
We’re halfway through September, and while “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” has been the big winner of the month so far, we have a new potential fall blockbuster this weekend. Read on for Gold Derby’s box office preview.
Paramount Pictures has done quite well with Hasbro’s flagship Transformers toy line, to the tune of $5.3 billion worldwide, mostly thanks to the five movies directed by Michael Bay. Now, they’re returning to the animated realm that kicked the whole thing off in the ’80s with “Transformers One,” a prequel movie that explores the origins of the Autobots and Decepticons with Oscar-winning filmmaker Josh Cooley (“Toy Story 4”).
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For this one, the filmmakers have put together a really impressive voice cast, including Chris Hemsworth, Brian Tyree Henry, Scarlett Johansson, Jon Hamm, Keegan-Michael Key and Laurence Fishburne. Hemsworth voices the earlier version of Optimus Prime, Henry voices Megatron, and Key voices the younger Bumblebee, and those three are doing the majority of the talk show rounds.
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Setting aside Bay’s five movies, which saw diminishing returns with each installment, we should instead look at the 2017 spin-off movie “Bumblebee” or last year’s “Transformers: Rise of the Beasts” to see where the franchise is at. “Bumblebee” opened with $21.6 million just before Christmas in 2018, but still ended up making $464.7 million worldwide. “Rise of the Beasts” opened with $61 million domestically – lower than the $70 million opening for Bay’s first movie in 2007 – and grossed $157.3 million in North America and $439.2 million worldwide.
Being an animated movie is a double-edged sword, because it could theoretically bring in younger viewers and family audiences, but we have to remember that in 2008, Lucasfilm tried to get into the theatrical animation realm with “Star Wars: The Clone Wars” – this is before the company was bought by Disney. Although George Lucas’s previous prequel trilogy grossed over $2 billion worldwide, “Clone Wars” only opened with $14.6 million and grossed just $68.7 million worldwide.
Despite that fact, Paramount Pictures knows it has a potentially huge hit, to the point where it started screening “Transformers One” months ago with reviews generally being more positive than all the Michael Bay movies put together, currently at 91% on Rotten Tomatoes.
“Transformers One” should be able to avoid the pitfalls of being an animated feature made for the big screen. With so much advance buzz, this should bring in a good mix of older Transformers diehards, but also be the perfect entry point for a younger generation, and an opening in the $35 to $45 million range seems possible, as “Transformers One” takes the top spot from “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.”
Halle Berry stars in the horror film “Never Let Go” from director Alexandre Aja (“Crawl”), as a mother with twin sons, all of whom are tied by rope to their cabin in the woods to protect themselves from an evil presence trying to possess them. This is Berry’s first theatrical release since Roland Emmerich’s “Moonfall” in 2022, and before that, she was in “John Wick: Chapter 3” with Keanu Reeves in 2019. That shows you how low-key Berry’s presence has been in theaters after being a huge star throughout the ’00s due to the “X-Men” movies and her own hits, not to mention winning the Oscar for “Monster’s Ball.”
“Never Let Go” looks a bit like the recent “The Watchers,” which opened with just $7 million before grossing $19 million domestic, that getting a boost from being the directorial debut by Ishana Night Shyamalan. Lionsgate seems to be changing gears with this one, firstly by releasing reviews earlier in the week, and so far they’re generally mixed-positive.
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Horror hasn’t been doing that well, and Lionsgate has had an especially tough time with back-to-back bombs over the past month. At any other time, this spooky-looking horror film would do huge business, but seeing how poorly horror films have been doing in recent weeks, including last week’s “Speak No Evil,” it feels like “Never Let Go” might struggle to get to $10 million this weekend, though it still should be good for third place.
Not helping matters will be the competing horror film, “The Substance,” starring Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley and directed by Coralie Fargeat (“Revenge”), which is going to be the streamer Mubi’s widest theatrical release to date. Reviews from the movie’s Cannes premiere in May (where it won a screenplay award) and recent screenings at the Toronto International Film Festival (where it won the Midnight Madness audience award) have led to terrific reviews with the movie currently at 90% on Rotten Tomatoes.
Moore has been more active in promoting this movie than Berry has been with “Never Let Go,” although Berry stepped up her talk show appearances just this week. Many older moviegoers will fondly remember some of Moore’s ’80s and ’90s classics, while younger ones will just be tapping into the movie’s buzz for its excessive gore, while Qualley has become quite popular among the younger crowd.
Being released by Mubi into roughly 1,700 theaters, it will be interesting to see how this fares against “Never Let Go,” since that also has a big name star who hasn’t been in a lot of theatrical releases lately. Even though that’s in twice as many theaters, “The Substance” should be able to bring in $3 to 6 million, which would be enough to get it into the top five.
The Apple Studios comedy “Wolfs,” starring George Clooney and Brad Pitt and directed by Jon Watts (“Spider-Man: No Way Home”), was supposed to get a wide release via Sony Pictures this weekend. Instead, it will get one week in limited release before debuting on Apple TV+ next week, and we’ll have to wait until Sunday to see if it even reports box office.
Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve (“The Worst Person in the World”) star in Aaron Schimberg’s “A Different Man,” with Stan playing Edward, a disfigured actor who lives next door to Reinsve’s playwright. After he goes through an experimental process to rectify his condition, Edward takes a role in his neighbor’s new play that’s essentially about his former self, only to encounter Adam Pearson’s flamboyant (and also disfigured) Oswald, who is everything Edward wants to be. A24 is giving the dramedy a limited release this weekend.
On Saturday, the documentary “Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story” will get a two-night only theatrical release with a second showing on Wednesday, September 25. It’s probably one of the best documentaries of the year, likely to be in consideration for the documentary Oscar, but we’ll have to see how it fares in theaters before it ultimately ends up on CNN and/or Max.
Check back on Sunday to see how the above movies fare.
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