Paramount Pictures is looking to profit off the success of Transformers: Age of Extinction, which pulled in $1.1 billion worldwide, and now they’ve decided to give fan-favorite Bumblebee his own spinoff.
Transformers 5 is being directed by Michael Bay, and will hit theaters on June 23, 2017, but the studio is trying something new by giving Bumblebee his own solo movie, which will be released on June 8, 2018.
Paramount chairman and CEO Brad Grey revealed to The Hollywood Reporter that they believe, “There are characters in the Transformers universe that can be and should be made into their own movies. We will make the first movie with Michael (Bay) and go right into a Bumblebee movie, which will be at a lower cost.”
It seems the studio wants to hedge their bets a bit, by giving the Bumblebee spinoff a lower budget than its predecessors, which have had massive budgets ranging from $150 – $210 million.
The Transformers franchise itself has brought in nearly $4 billion worldwide since the first film blew up at the box office back in 2007, with Shia LaBeouf and Megan Fox in the starring roles. The two have since left the franchise, and Mark Wahlberg was the lead in the last film.
Paramount obviously feels there are more stories to tell in the Transformers franchise, and while the last three films have done well at the box office, they have been critically panned. But, the studio reportedly wants to mimic Disney’s plan for Star Wars, which is to bring at least one new movie from the franchise to the theater each year.
Michael Bay has said that Transformers 5 will be his last directing gig within the franchise, which means the studio will be looking to find a new director for the future movies, as well as the cheaper Bumblebee spinoff.
We know that the studio has brought in a team of writers to work on stories for continuing the franchise, and Steven Spielberg is involved in some way as a producer, so the quality of film will probably continue to be about what we’ve seen over the last few years.
It’ll be interesting to see how the studio shaves the Bumblebee budget down, since these films cost a lot to make due to the massive amounts of CGI used. Dropping Michael Bay as the director should reduce the cost a bit, as he gets a backend percentage of the profits as well as his bloated base salary, but we hope the “cheaper spinoff” won’t result in an even worse film.
There’s also the fact that they have to decide if Bumblebee will get his voice processor’s bugs figured out before they move forward with a spinoff with one of the favorite Transformers.