The jury is very much out on how much interest audiences still have in the Transformers franchise as a whole, so you’ve got to at least admire the ambition on Paramount’s part, after the studio revealed that Steven Caple Jr.’s Rise of the Beasts will serve as the opening chapter of a brand new trilogy.
The franchise has earned over $4.8 billion at the box office, so it was never going to ride quietly into the sunset, but there’s been a huge drop-off in takings across the last couple of installments. Michael Bay’s five-film arc delivered a pair of billion-dollar hits in Dark of the Moon and Age of Extinction, but reviews kept getting progressively worse.
The Last Knight earned over $500 million less than its two immediate predecessors, though, while Bumblebee ended up as the lowest-grossing outing for the Autobots and Decepticons yet, despite being the only entry to have received widespread acclaim.
As you can see from the reactions below, the Transformers fanbase definitely has mixed feelings over Rise of the Beasts having two direct sequels confirmed already.
Obviously, sentiments could change on a dime should Rise of the Beasts go down a storm, earn big bucks and inject the property with a whole new lease of life, but we won’t be finding that out until it hits theaters in the summer of 2023, so questions will linger until then.
