Transformers: The Last Knight
Budget: $217 million
Domestic gross: $130.2 million
Worldwide gross: $604 million
How can we say a flick that’s currently sitting as the tenth highest grossing film of 2017 is a flop? For most other movies, $600 million worldwide would be fantastic. For the Transfomers franchise, though, The Last Knight‘s total will be a major disappointment for the studio.
In comparison, the past two Transformers movies have grossed over $1 billion each, which puts the $400 million plummet of The Last Knight into sharper focus. Plus, on the back of a gargantuan budget of over $200 million, its domestic gross of $130 million is laughably poor.
The Last Knight was meant to be the first entry in a revitalized direction for the franchise, with the cluttered, bonkers storyline setting the stage for future movies. Now, however, it looks like the series will have to course correct with the upcoming, smaller-scale Bumblebee spinoff.
War For The Planet Of The Apes
Budget: $150 million
Domestic gross: $144.7 million
Worldwide gross: $366.8 million
Most of the big financial failures of this summer have also been those that have been critically reviled, which shows a stronger than usual connection between opinions of audiences and critics. War For the Planet of the Apes is the exception to this rule, though. It was acclaimed across the board but didn’t end up making much of a splash at the box office.
Whereas Dawn of the Planet of the Apes banked a hefty $700 million, War just about made half of that overall. Domestically, it was also a disappointment, as it dropped $60 million from the previous film’s gross. Even in China, where Dawn was one of the highest-grossing sequels ever, War really didn’t make much of an impression. It’s all a bit mystifying why that happened, but experts have generally cited the excess of sequels arriving this year as impacting on its success.
It’s a shame that audiences didn’t turn up as much as they should have for this closer to what’s been one of the strongest movie trilogies in recent years. Still, the Planet of the Apes franchise is an institution, so it’s not like it’s going to derail any plans 20th Century Fox might have.