Transformers: The Last Knight

Weekend Box Office: Rough Knight

I’m proud of you, domestic audiences! This weekend, the latest ‘Transformers’ movie opened far behind its predecessors. Now it’s time for international viewers to follow suit. Together, we can make Hollywood great again!

As expected, ‘Transformers: The Last Knight‘ beat out ‘Cars 3’ for the top spot at the box office. However, it opened far below the previous entries in the series. This fifth installment debuted mid-week with a light $23.7 million over Wednesday and Thursday. Over the actual weekend, it grossed only $45.3 million. The three-day openings of the previous series entries were (in chronological order) $70.5 million, $108.9 million, $97.8 million, and $100 million. Even if you compare the $69 million five-day total with the others, ‘The Last Knight’ trails well behind.

International moviegoers, however, are still eating up the Bayhem. From 41 markets, ‘The Last Knight’ made $196.2 million, $123.4 million of which came from China alone. That’s a great start for the $217 million tentpole. It’s going to be up to the foreign box office to determine if the movie becomes a profitable picture for Paramount or not.

Buena Vista and Warner Bros. have each estimated that their top performers finished the weekend with $25.1 million, so until the actuals are announced later today, ‘Cars 3’ and ‘Wonder Woman’ are tied for second place.

Cars 3‘ opened below expectations last weekend and suffered a drop that few kids’ movies ever see in their second week. Falling 53% in attendance, the film’s ten-day total is just shy of $100 million. With the more relevant ‘Despicable Me 3’ opening this weekend, it’s likely to suffer another blow. The movie’s international roll-out is staggered, but has yielded $41.4 million from 26 markets so far.

On the flipside, four-week-old ‘Wonder Woman‘ only slipped 39%. To date, the Amazonian princess has made $318.3 million domestically, which is less than $12 million behind the run of ‘Batman v. Superman’ and $7 million behind ‘Suicide Squad’. Having already outgrossed ‘Man of Steel’, ‘Wonder Woman’ is about to become the highest-grossing title in DC’s Extended Universe. Overseas, it has lassoed $334.5 million, bringing its worldwide total up to $652.8 million.

Floating up to fourth place from last week’s #5 debut, ‘47 Meters Down‘ had a surprisingly strong second weekend. It added 201 screens to its release and dipped only 34% in attendance. With another $7.4 million in the tank, the underwater shark thriller has a ten-day total of $24.2 million. Its international release has yet to kick off.

Last week’s surprise hit bio-pic rounded out the Top 5, but took a big drop in attendance. ‘All Eyez on Me‘ fell a massive 78%, earning just $5.8 million. That brings its ten-day total up to $38.6 million, which is good, but not as great as last weekend led us to believe.

Playing on five screens, the limited release of ‘The Big Sick‘ pulled off the best per-screen results of the year. Collecting a total of $435,000, it averaged an impressive $87,000 at each location. With early Oscar buzz, expect to see the film do well when it expands wide in the coming weeks.

Also playing very well in limited release – but not as well as ‘The Big Sick’ – was Sofia Coppola’s ‘The Beguiled‘. The scandalous period piece made $240,545, for a per-screen average of $60,136. Focus will expand the picture wide this week.

Top 10:

1. ‘Transformers: The Last Knight’ (Paramount) – $45,300,000

2. ‘Cars 3’ (Buena Vista) – $25,175,000

2. ‘Wonder Woman’ (Warner Bros.) – $25,175,000

4. ’47 Meters Down’ (Entertainment Studios) – $7,435,000

5. ‘All Eyez on Me’ (Lionsgate) – $5,850,000

6. ‘The Mummy’ (Universal) – $5,836,900

7. ‘Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales’ (Buena Vista) – $5,239,000

8. ‘Rough Night’ (Sony) – $4,700,000

9. ‘Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie’ (Fox) – $4,280,000

10. ‘Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2’ (Buena Vista) – $3,000,000

8 comments

    • Luke Hickman
      Author

      I suspect they’ll still make it simply because international audiences still show up for these movies – but they’ll likely reduce its budget from the bloated dollars they’ve been throwing at Bay’s movies.

      • NJScorpio

        My enthusiasm for Bay’s Transformer’s franchise comes owning several Camaros/Firebirds over the years, and owning a 2012 Camaro currently. I really dislike the extra cladding that was continually added to Bumblebee, taking him further from looking like a street-going Camaro.

        I hope that if this is an origin story, Bumble is a 1975 Camaro again (in 1975) with the other Transformers using 1970’s model vehicles, without a bunch of extra body molding that clearly looks like it is from 2017.

          • Timcharger

            Bumblebee would be a Isuzu, Jeep, or Kia (randomly picked I, J, K names) if the right amount of brand placement price is paid. Heck, there are better than 50/50 odds that a Bumblebee set in the 80s would be SAIC Motor, a Chinese car brand.

            Nothing against Jina, unlike our President Joffrey, it’s just that based on film viewership, a Jina car brand would get better capitalism value in a Transformers brand placement.

          • NJScorpio

            That does make sense, and be more in keeping with cannon. With that though, I’d like it to at least end with Bumblebee becoming the 1975 Camaro seen in Bay’s first Transformers (perhaps right before going into storage).

  1. Chaz

    Opened massive in China, International Audiences still love these movies….and guess what? So do I, paid money to see it IMAX last night and wasnt disappointed with it, sure it had stupid Bay humor but man, nothing beats his visuals and action sequences and thats what I go for and will keep going until they stop making them 🙂

  2. Clark

    International audiences did not eat this up. It opened lower than any other Transformers movie in the UK, for example. It was only a success story in China.

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