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 !

[GoktimusPrime]

I hope they don't have Chinese characters emblazoned on all of the toys, like they did for some of the RiD toys.

RiD toys had Japanese words written on them which are notably different from Chinese.
e.g.
* Prowl's doors have 警視庁 (Keishichou: Metropolitan Police Dept.) written on them. This is only ever used on Japanese police cars. I've never seen these words on a Chinese police car, which tend to either have 公安 (public safety/order) or 警察 (police) written on them. AFAIK other Sinophone regions (e.g. Taiwan, Hong Kong etc.) also use the latter. But I don't think 警視庁 is used in any Sinophone country/region -- it's more of a Japanese word.
* W.A.R.S.' bonnet has 戦 (Ikusa: war) written on it, which is different from the way it's written in Chinese - 戰 in traditional Chinese (as well as Korean and Vietnamese) and 战 in simplified Chinese. Only the Japanese language writes it as 戦.

Great toys will still sell well regardless of what language is written on them. And a lot of kids these days are getting more used to seeing it -- just look at Power Rangers Samurai. And Generations Drift had Japanese writing on the toy and sword even though it was initially made for the Anglophone market (and based on an Anglophone continuity character), and that toy sold well too. Beast Machines Magmatron also came in a box with Japanese writing all over it. Heck, a lot of toys from Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit have Tengwar script written all over them, and that's a script from Middle Earth that doesn't even exist in real life! I have a cheap little replica of the One Ring (from a show bag ), but it looks great - part of the appeal being the Ring Poem being sculpted on it in Black Speech (inscribed in Tengwar). Ash nazg durbatulûk!

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 !

So let them deal with the fact that they're not?

[reillyd]

You are so lucky to be gifted with languages Goktimus. Japanese, Chinese, even latin.

I appreciate the RiD translations too. I had the toys but never knew what
they meant, but they seem quite applicable to those characters now.
Now I know, and knowing is half the battle