Final Bumblebee Box Office Numbers

Now that the film has been out for a few weeks in Japan and about to be released on home video tomorrow in the States, seems like a good time to provide a final tally on the box office of Bumblebee. As reported by Box Office Mojo:

Total Lifetime Grosses
Domestic: $127,195,589 27.3%
+ Foreign: $338,000,000 72.7%
= Worldwide: $465,195,589

Overall not bad but also continued signs that more and more the choices made for blockbuster films are going to be dictated by that 70%+ in overseas dollars then whatever US audiences may want. The $465 million total is not puff out your chest, greenlight all the sequels level dollars, but its enough to keep the movie franchise alive and build on as Paramount and Hasbro navigate a future without the Michael Bay approach to the franchise. That Bay-less future aided their profit margins as saved on the cost of Bay's huge paycheck, back end points and his cut of the merchandising sales. Between those savings and tax credits, the film landed in the profitable category probably by around $200 million or so and that doesn't include whatever was made in selling toys, shirts, and all the other stuff that comes with a movie release.

In short, its no surprise Paramount declared the movie profitable and started exploring a seuqel while also not exactly moving full steam ahead as it use to be the next sequel would have been in early pre-production by now. Instead slow and cautious seems to be the approach now as they do not want to blow that profit by losing it all on a sequel that doesn't land. As a result I suspect there will be no new Transformers film in theaters until late 2021 or mid 2022. The era of a movie every other year is sadly done, not really because of Bay but because of the thinking is that if Star Wars couldn't handle that output, no other franchise could either (Marvel disagrees of course). Congrats to the cast and crew of Bumblebee for a successful and entertaining movie.