Transformers 5 & 6 not yet guaranteed

[griffin]

Despite the billions of dollars that Paramount has made so far with the first three Transformers Movies worldwide, and a fourth movie that is almost guaranteed to make a profit due to all the similar factors in play, they are not committing to a full second trilogy until after the box-office figures come in for number 4.
It seems like an odd thing for them to announce, unless it is standard procedure for such an expensive investment. (committing to 3 movies of this budget could cost them a fair bit if they tried backing out due to a flop for number 4 or 5)

[BigTransformerTrev]

It seems a bit of a silly thing for them to announce. It makes it sound like they don't have full confidence in the product they are producing.

If anything you think they would be touting TF4 as 'The start to a whole new Transformers Trilogy!' to try and get people excited and bums on theatre seats.

[UltraMarginal]

A curious statement from them, but they are taking this in a different artistic direction than the previous 3, simply with the Pictures we've seen of Prime, so they may be worried about general public backlash with a change like that. I'm throwing darts in the dark here.

there will always be another Transformers movie, Just maybe not straight away as there has been for the last 7 years.

[Sinnertwin]

They can always go the Kickstarter way if t does flop

[liegeprime]

meh, they can always just do purely CGI movies of Transformers, that'll be a lot cheaper plus they can make whatever they want that they can't get away in real life action films for a fraction of the cost. Im guessing they saw all the reactions of fanboys/girls to how ugly they're new prime look is and got worried hahah. They better be! Stop playing with our loyalty!!

[reillyd]

After reading about the heavy product placement for Chinese only products, and the way they're basing so much of the plot in China, with Chinese actors taking forefront I wonder if it will be a US domestic flop, and kill the franchise? I hope they don't have Chinese characters emblazoned on all of the toys, like they did for some of the RiD toys. And yes that may sound quaintly racist, but I don't know if it would translate to US audiences. Half of them think US is the only country that's important, or that there are even other countries !