Please watch BUMBLEBEE in cinemas (NO SPOILERS)

[Raptormesh]

I am interested to watch but the thing in the way isn't really the movie itself but for the lack of will to go to the theatres. The last time was around three years ago.

Will find a way to watch this one though.

[GoktimusPrime]

Please do so soon as I'm noticing that a lot of cinemas have now cut down sessions. I checked half a dozen Event cinemas around me and only found TWO evening sessions.

[bowspearer]

Good news for now. tformers.com has noted the following of the US Domestic Market:

Box Office Mojo reports that Bumblebee has made another $20 million in US box office revenue this weekend, dropping only 5.3% from its debut. That's relatively unusual for your average popcorn movie! Also worth noting is the fact that apparently the first-weekend box office numbers included the advance-screening numbers... which could possibly mean that the film made more money this weekend than last.

Box office positions are unchanged from last week. Aquaman is still at #1 with a 23.5% dropoff in revenue. Mary Poppins Returns has in fact gained 19% over last week - a noteworthy feat. Also displaying gains are Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse and The Mule in 4th and 5th respectively. Excepting Aquaman everything in the top five is doing even more remarkably than Bumblebee... but the fact that Bumblebee is slowly but steadily maintaining an audience is something that should be remarked on. And significant international debuts in China and Japan have yet to occur.

The new approach to Transformers films isn't setting the world on fire as some of us might have hoped, but it's too early to officially declare it a complete bomb.

1 1 Aquaman WB $51,550,000 -23.5% 4,125 - $12,497 $188,785,000 - 2
2 2 Mary Poppins Returns BV $28,019,000 +19.1% 4,090 - $6,851 $98,929,758 - 2
3 3 Bumblebee Par. $20,500,000 -5.3% 3,550 - $5,775 $66,778,020 $135 2
4 4 Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse Sony $18,315,000 +11.2% 3,813 - $4,803 $103,643,730 $90 3
5 5 The Mule WB $11,780,000 +24.0% 2,787 +131 $4,227 $60,738,465 $50 3

In fact, Box Office Mojo has Bumblebee's worldwide gross at $157,178,020, with Australia not only accounting for $4,821,237 of that, but as it stands, the Opening Weekend accounts for only 43.2% of that, which is a very good sign.

All in all it looks like it will do quite well so far.

[bowspearer]

And now China has taken it to $298 million worldwide.

[DaptoDog]

Yep the opinions I am reading point to it doing very well in China at the moment, which should ensure it does $400m-$500m globally making it financially successful. This will hopefully ensure they make further Transformers movies in a similar style to Bumblebee.

[Sinnertwin]

How much would Bumblebee need to bring in to be considered a commercial success? 400 mil?
I'm aware that an Optimus Prime movie is being produced, but if Bumblebee only brings in 350m, would they scrap the Optimus movie?

[Ralph Wiggum]

Typically movies need to make roughly double just to break even, so with a budget of around 100-130 million, yeah anything towards $350 million would be considered successful. Ending at 400-500 million would be fantastic.

[Bladestorm]

My son and I finally got to see this yesterday as he was FINALLY well enough to leave the house.
Firstly, it was hard to find a session as it seems to now be limited to only a few theatres which was both surprising and disappointing. The theatre we went too wasn't a very nice one either which probably didn't help but as sessions were so limited we didn't have much choice.

The movie itself was good. That's a huge thing for me to say as y'all know Bumblebee is probably my least favourite Bayformers character and previous movies had progressively put me off Bumblebee completely. However, this movie has redeemed the character for me in some ways.
The movie was cute, a little slow in places but worth it for the epic scenes from Cybertron (among others). There was a bit of Baysplosion and a bit of homage to G1 which my son LOVED! When he saw one character in particular, despite the brevity of the scene he was absolutely delighted!
I liked the feel-good vibe and the soundtrack used was AWESOME! But I'm a kid of the '80s so I'm completely biased.
There was enough bot vision to give Bumblebee depth of character and enough nods to both the Bayverse and G1 to keep any fan happy.
The human bot interaction complemented the story most of the time. The human characters were ok although some of their actions and props were too modern.

Honestly, if I could watch a movie length version of the Cybertron scene I would pay good money to watch just that over and over!

Given the mish-mash of the Bayverse movies, I went into this not expecting it to relate to any of the other movies and with an open mind thinking of it as its own entity. The movie isn't perfect. You could pick a million holes in the movie if you tried to directly match it into the Bay movieverse or any other existing Transformers universe but it also has enough to extrapolate your own theories of its inclusion to the Bay movie universe should you wish to postulate over it and unlike the last Transformers movie you can see there has been an effort to reflect on the history already laid down.

I hope it does well enough for more movies. Based on this the Transformers franchise deserves more movies. Giving each character their own moment to shine and then bringing them together for something big a la Avengers would be awesome but alas the Transformers fanbase numbers nor the general public knowledge of characters isn't strong enough to do this.

If you haven't seen it, go see it if you can. It is worth the entry price... and I haven't said that about a Transformers movie for a long long time...

[DaptoDog]

Typically movies need to make roughly double just to break even, so with a budget of around 100-130 million, yeah anything towards $350 million would be considered successful. Ending at 400-500 million would be fantastic.

Yes the rough rule of double budget is also my understanding. The thing that complicates things is the mix of global box office revenue. The more that's generated in the US the better because that's where the studio (eg Paramount) gets the highest cut of the takings. Whereas in China they receive a far smaller share of the revenue given the need to partner with local distributors etc.

How much would Bumblebee need to bring in to be considered a commercial success? 400 mil?
I'm aware that an Optimus Prime movie is being produced, but if Bumblebee only brings in 350m, would they scrap the Optimus movie?

I reckon they were banking on $400m plus and I think that's the minimum it will do. It's at $300m now and has just done $60m in China during the first weekend. Given it should typically do at least 2x the first weekend given industry norms, that means it should do at least another $60m in China. Add another $20m or so in the US plus some more in other overseas markets (hasn't opened in Japan yet) should see it easily get to the $400m mark.

I'd say we will at least get one more movie.

[GoktimusPrime]

Here's the thing... love or hate Bumblebee, the fact is that the Transformers film franchise needed something DIFFERENT. If Bayformers is more your thing, great, but there are 5 other movies for you to rewatch and enjoy. But it was just getting repetitive. Bumblebee is such a breath of fresh air. And I don't want future Transformers movies to necessarily repeat Bumblebee's plot either, cos we don't want that to get stale either.

The original Star Wars Trilogy didn't recycle the plot of A New Hope over and over again. The Empire Strikes Back was different from ANH and The Return of the Jedi was different from ANH and TESB. The important thing was that all 3 movies gave us good character-driven stories with characters that were relatable.