Transformers One is Revealed to Have a very Modest Budget

Posted by william-james88 Sep 18, 2024 at 3:26pm CDT 42,059 views

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There are two ways to measure a film's success these days. We have how much it made, which directly correlated to the public's interest in a film. And we have how profitable it is, which helps predict the direction of further movies in a franchise (or the likelihood of similar movies being made). Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning Part 1 made A LOT more money than the Bumblebee movie (100 Million more) BUT it also cost a lot more. So while public interest in the Mission Impossible franchise may be higher than the Transformers franchise, Paramount made a nicer profit on the Bumblebee film.

I lay all that out so that you understand how significant the lower budget for Transformers One is. Deadline has published that the budget is a very modest $75 Million. That is by far the lowest production budget ever for a Transformers movie distributed by Paramount. And that's before accounting for any inflation.

This means that it will take a lot less tickets sales to render the film profitable. If this low cost does indeed lead to a high profit, this could be the future of the franchise, theatrically speaking. We will keep an eye out on the gross of the film in the weeks to come and keep you in the know.

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Re: Transformers One is Revealed to Have a very Modest Budget (view post)

Comment by kurthy Sep 18, 2024

Yes, please more theatrical animated transformers movies!!!

Re: Transformers One is Revealed to Have a very Modest Budget (view post)

Comment by #1 Signal Lancer fan Sep 18, 2024

william-james88 wrote: If this low cost does indeed lead to a high profit, this could be the future of the franchise, theatrically speaking.

I haven't seen the movie yet, but I've been hoping this for a while now. I've seen a lot of people say that this is one of the best things to come out of the franchise in a while, and even though I haven't seen it, its not hard to see why.

1. It's character-driven and the Transformers are fleshed-out, dynamic characters. This is a big complaint a lot of people, myself included, have had with many of the live action films

2. It's family friendly, but not geared primarily towards children. Yes, Transformers is a franchise with a lot of appeal to kids, but it also has a lot of adult fans. This feels like the first project since Animated that is geared towards both audience simultaneously, rather than being aimed at kids (Earthspark, Cyberverse, RID 2015) or aimed at more mature audiences (Prime, WFC Trilogy, live action movies).

As someone who has felt starved for good Transformers media (comics excluded) since Prime ended, I hope this movie is successful enough for Hasbro and Paramount to lean into.

Re: Transformers One is Revealed to Have a very Modest Budget (view post)

Comment by #1 Signal Lancer fan Sep 18, 2024

Sabrblade wrote:These films are no stranger to such coincidences, as the first five films made Earth coincidentally be:
The planet that the AllSpark and Megatron happened to land on.
The planet that The Fallen's star harvester happened to be built on.
The planet that Megatron and Sentinel Prime happened to agree to conquer and enslave when they made their deal with each other long ago.
The planet the Creators happened to drop a Seed on in prehistoric times.
The planet the Guardian Knights happened to bring the Staff of Merlin to and hide there.

When you spell it all out like that, that's a lot of coincidence.

Given the whole "Earth is Unicron" plot element of TLK, I wonder if there could be some sort of "Cybertronians are drawn to Earth because of Unicron" explanation

Re: Transformers One is Revealed to Have a very Modest Budget (view post)

Comment by chuckdawg1999 Sep 18, 2024

It's all one giant Multiverse that will culminate in a giant crossover that will see the Transformers evolve into Go-Bots.

Re: Transformers One is Revealed to Have a very Modest Budget (view post)

Comment by Glyph Sep 18, 2024

Honestly, I figure at this point that the sooner folks admit to themselves that TF lore is all just a bunch of self-contained loosey-goosey retellings that rhymes more than it connects, the happier they are.

I can leave the obsessive continuity gap-filling to the Star Wars guys (OK, and the Japanese G1 guys, I suppose), and not get bothered at all that things look like they should fit together until you examine a single detail. *twitch*

--ETA--

#1 Signal Lancer Fan wrote:
william-james88 wrote:If this low cost does indeed lead to a high profit, this could be the future of the franchise, theatrically speaking.
I haven't seen the movie yet, but I've been hoping this for a while now. I've seen a lot of people say that this is one of the best things to come out of the franchise in a while, and even though I haven't seen it, its not hard to see why.

TBH I hope this too. Good animation isn't cheap, but it's cheaper than ILM VFX and does help to ground the films in the family-friendly bracket where I tend to find on-screen TF works best, rather than trying to take itself way too seriously as a big-budget action thriller. (Yes, yes, animation is a medium, not a genre; I'm making allowances for Hollywood thinking. And there's space for serious stories too, but I feel comics are a better home for those.)

If TF:One does well and sets up a future of well-produced animated TF films, I'll be a happy camper.

Re: Transformers One is Revealed to Have a very Modest Budget (view post)

Comment by First-Aid Sep 18, 2024

chuckdawg1999 wrote:It's all one giant Multiverse that will culminate in a giant crossover that will see the Transformers evolve into Go-Bots.

...and fight Thanos!

Re: Transformers One is Revealed to Have a very Modest Budget (view post)

Comment by cloudballoon Sep 18, 2024

Always thought animation is the direction to go whether TF:1 itself as a movie is good or not. We don't have to deal with the humans - whether in the plot or the whimps of the actors and it just expand the universe that much more as we don't have to ground the story to be on Earth only. It just opens out every possibilities for the franchise.

So it's good news that the early reviews seems to indicate it's a great movie and the buzz & hype around it seems like a thing too.

My only concern about it is that the Bot designs aren't great. Too same-y with OP, Megs, Elita-1 as main cast along with all the miner types (see the Iacon race scene & Blokees model kits). I like Bee, Alpha Trion & Sentinel though. So I hope the toy sales go well for Hasbro so the company can turn things around. Really widh TF:1 can help with the franchise's longevity.

I never really cared for Bay style action "spectacle" in the first place, non-sense Bay-bay-bay-plosions!!! is just not stimulating to me (that said, it's still better then Superheroes fights - when punches & kicks that cause massive environmental damage means nothing to the heroes/villain physically, I feel nothing.) and combine THAT with non-sense plot and unlikeable characters, I'm just not interested to experience it in the theatre and only worth a rental.

For live-action, I only love BBM, and that's because it gives me that '80's E.T. vibe that Spielberg was great at. '07 was OK because of its shock & awe value of what a live-action TF can be and deserves massive credit for it. But without that rose-colored glasses of nostalgia, it was just an OK blockbuster with nothing to love on repeat viewings.

So if Paramount learns any lessons, I hope it's that develop the Animation side as the main events, and the live action as side projects (go smaller, focus on plots).

Re: Transformers One is Revealed to Have a very Modest Budget (view post)

Comment by Rodimus Prime Sep 18, 2024

Sabrblade wrote:
Rodimus Prime wrote:And Sabrblade, as for your separate continuities theory, it doesn't work. The 2007 movie can't be a part of both.
Counterpoint: the Beast Wars and Beast Machines cartoons exist within multiple continuities. You got the 3H/Fun Pub BW universe, the Japanese G1 cartoon universe, the Dreamwave G1 comics universe, the 2006 IDW BW comics universe, Fun Pub's Wings Universe, and possibly even the Devil's Due G.I. Joe vs. the Transformers continuity.

Yeah and it's a non-linear mess. For most of us fans it's probably acceptable because we're used to it, but try to explain it to the average moviegoer who just wants to watch all relevant parts of the story. It's confusing.

As for Bee being here during WW2 in TLK and showing up in 1987 afterwards for "the 1st time" it would be easy to explain it with transwarp technology in a sequel to Bumblebee if we had gotten a capable story from a creative team that cared about the franchise instead of what we got with RoTB.

Re: Transformers One is Revealed to Have a very Modest Budget (view post)

Comment by chuckdawg1999 Sep 18, 2024

First-Aid wrote:
chuckdawg1999 wrote:It's all one giant Multiverse that will culminate in a giant crossover that will see the Transformers evolve into Go-Bots.

...and fight Thanos!

Well, that's all they have. Kang or Doom would make more sense.

Re: Transformers One is Revealed to Have a very Modest Budget (view post)

Comment by Sabrblade Sep 18, 2024

cloudballoon wrote:My only concern about it is that the Bot designs aren't great. Too same-y with OP, Megs, Elita-1 as main cast along with all the miner types (see the Iacon race scene & Blokees model kits).

Without spoiling anything, there is an in-story reason for that.

cloudballoon wrote:For live-action, I only love BBM, and that's because it gives me that '80's E.T. vibe that Spielberg was great at.

Funnily enough, that "80's E.T. vibe" is the reason we got radio-speak Bumblebee in the first place. Spielberg wanted recapture the magic of E.T. by having Bumblebee be the human leads alien sidekick who doesn't speak much, like how E.T. was. In fact, Spielberg originally wanted none of the Transformers to speak at all, which is why most of the Decepticons' dialogue in that movie is in a subtitled alien language. For once, this is a case where Spielberg did not have a good idea.

Rodimus Prime wrote:
Sabrblade wrote:
Rodimus Prime wrote:And Sabrblade, as for your separate continuities theory, it doesn't work. The 2007 movie can't be a part of both.
Counterpoint: the Beast Wars and Beast Machines cartoons exist within multiple continuities. You got the 3H/Fun Pub BW universe, the Japanese G1 cartoon universe, the Dreamwave G1 comics universe, the 2006 IDW BW comics universe, Fun Pub's Wings Universe, and possibly even the Devil's Due G.I. Joe vs. the Transformers continuity.
Yeah and it's a non-linear mess. For most of us fans it's probably acceptable because we're used to it, but try to explain it to the average moviegoer who just wants to watch all relevant parts of the story. It's confusing.

Yep, all because multiple disparate parties want to play in the same sandbox but not with each other.

The same thing also happened with the first three movies, leading them to occupy multiple continuities too. 2007/ROTF/DOTM exist in a main movie universe with AOE and TLK, in an expanded universe with the IDW movie comics/the "Ghosts of Yesterday" novel/"The Veiled Threat" novel/the Cyber Missions web cartoon/the Classified novel trilogy/and a few other things, and in a UK-original expanded universe with the comics published in Titan Magazine plus AOE again.

Re: Transformers One is Revealed to Have a very Modest Budget (view post)

Comment by Glyph Sep 18, 2024

chuckdawg1999 wrote:
First-Aid wrote:
chuckdawg1999 wrote:It's all one giant Multiverse that will culminate in a giant crossover that will see the Transformers evolve into Go-Bots.
...and fight Thanos!
Well, that's all they have. Kang or Doom would make more sense.

I guess we still need Disney to buy Hasbro so that we can get Circuit Breaker back, re-release issue #3 and finally settle Unicron vs Galactus...

Rodimus Prime wrote:Yeah and it's a non-linear mess. For most of us fans it's probably acceptable because we're used to it, but try to explain it to the average moviegoer who just wants to watch all relevant parts of the story. It's confusing.

"So this movie calls back to these other things, you can watch them if you want to get the references but you don't need to, it's not really a series, they're all just kinda doing their own thing. Don't worry about it."

Re: Transformers One is Revealed to Have a very Modest Budget (view post)

Comment by cloudballoon Sep 18, 2024

Sabrblade wrote:
cloudballoon wrote:My only concern about it is that the Bot designs aren't great. Too same-y with OP, Megs, Elita-1 as main cast along with all the miner types (see the Iacon race scene & Blokees model kits).
Without spoiling anything, there is an in-story reason for that.

One of the trailer said "they were brothers" so my guess is that they're functionist miners and made the same along with many others, and they're in a lower cast so that's why when Elita-1 saw OP & Megs in the Iacon race she was so surprised & excited and called on all miners (sort of brethens?) to watch the race. That's my guest.

Note that I'm not saying the designs are BAD, the never-skipped-legs-day design is a problem and I'm OK with it really, it's just that I want a lot more body variations on a shelf. That's why the toy buying urge might be dampened for me on this toyline.

But Bee is a winner. I said it before that this is the best looking Bee ever for me.

Still, I haven't looked forward to a TF movie as TF:1 since '07.

Re: Transformers One is Revealed to Have a very Modest Budget (view post)

Comment by Sabrblade Sep 18, 2024

Glyph wrote:
chuckdawg1999 wrote:
First-Aid wrote:
chuckdawg1999 wrote:It's all one giant Multiverse that will culminate in a giant crossover that will see the Transformers evolve into Go-Bots.
...and fight Thanos!
Well, that's all they have. Kang or Doom would make more sense.

I guess we still need Disney to buy Hasbro so that we can get Circuit Breaker back, re-release issue #3 and finally settle Unicron vs Galactus...

IDW's last reprint volumes of the Marvel G1 comics included issue #3 in all its Symbiote Spidey glory, and remastered to boot.

cloudballoon wrote:One of the trailer said "they were brothers"

Without spoiling anything, that's just a reference to their friendship. The Aligned backstory lore that's become the standard backstory lore for several modern versions of Transformers fiction established Optimus and Megatron as former friends who were once as close as brothers before falling out and becoming sworn enemies. It stemmed from a line spoken by Optimus in the 2007 movie after Megatron was killed by Sam shoving the AllSpark in his chest: "You left me no choice, brother." Then the Prime cartoon had Optimus describe Megatron as "someone I once considered a brother". It's less literal siblings and more of a close bond of friendship.

cloudballoon wrote:it's just that I want a lot more body variations on a shelf.

Re: Transformers One is Revealed to Have a very Modest Budget (view post)

Comment by Sabrblade Sep 19, 2024

william-james88 wrote:Positive-wise, it means the film accomplishes its mission of telling an origin story for not just these characters but for their factions too within just one hour and a half. Negative-wise, it means a lot of story beats are rushed. Optimus goes from a guy who doesn't really respect the rules to the Optimus Prime we know in a few days while Megatron also goes through a significant change in parallel. So take that as you wish. I personally would have wanted more time spent on this, but I also recognize how efficient the story telling is to convey all this in a short movie for all ages.

This, I feel, stems from the fact that it's an animated Hollywood movie in general. Historically, animated Hollywood films have tended to be kept under 2 hours in length, as it seems there's still a belief in Hollywood that "casual moviegoers won't want to sit through a 2-hour cartoon", rooted in that age-old belief that live-action is better than animation because "live-action is for adults/matured audiences while animation is for children/losers/stupid people".

Looking at Wikipedia's list of longest animated films, the vast majority of films on the list are Asian in origin (Japan, China, Russia, India), and of the films listed as exceeding 2 hours in length, only seven are from the United States. And of those seven, four of them are independent movies. Of the remaining three, two of them weren't fully animated films, as Ralph Bakshi's Lord of the Rings used a hybrid of animation with live-action rotoscoping, while Disney's Fantasia had plenty of live-action segments interspersed between its animated short segments. This leaves only one US film on that list that was completely animated and longer than two hours, that being Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, which was itself a big gamble of a film leaving itself on such a massive cliffhanger, but which it could better pull off after having had such a successful preceding Spider-Verse film to help boost its own chances of success.

So, Transformers One being an animated Hollywood film was always gonna have an uphill battle in making its runtime be as long as it could be.

Re: Transformers One is Revealed to Have a very Modest Budget (view post)

Comment by Big Grim Sep 19, 2024

#1 Signal Lancer fan wrote:As someone who has felt starved for good Transformers media (comics excluded) since Prime ended, I hope this movie is successful enough for Hasbro and Paramount to lean into.

Gods, I miss Prime. I don't understand why these shows aren't easy to get on Blu-Ray. I prefer a physical copy of stuff like this because when they disappear from streamers (as Prime has) there's no means of watching it. (It's why I want a boxset of netflix Voltron as well.).

Lookin' forward to ONE. While I will probably always prefer the IDW version of Pax the cop and Megatron the Miner come revolutionary, I will always welcome new ideas. I learnt my lesson after watching Beast Wars years (and years and YEARS!) ago thanks to AlexKingdom and finding that it was *gasp* GOOD?!?

~ Grim

Re: Transformers One is Revealed to Have a very Modest Budget (view post)

Comment by william-james88 Sep 19, 2024

Big Grim wrote:Gods, I miss Prime. I don't understand why these shows aren't easy to get on Blu-Ray. I prefer a physical copy of stuff like this because when they disappear from streamers (as Prime has) there's no means of watching it. (It's why I want a boxset of netflix Voltron as well.).

Lookin' forward to ONE. While I will probably always prefer the IDW version of Pax the cop and Megatron the Miner come revolutionary, I will always welcome new ideas. I learnt my lesson after watching Beast Wars years (and years and YEARS!) ago thanks to AlexKingdom and finding that it was *gasp* GOOD?!?

~ Grim

No joke, of all TF content, the one that feels most similar to this film is the Prime show. Very much for kids, but with lots of nice lore for longtime fans.

I do find it cute how the film has a predictable twist for adults but something that could be mindblowing for a 6-8 year old.

Re: Transformers One is Revealed to Have a very Modest Budget (view post)

Comment by #1 Signal Lancer fan Sep 19, 2024

Big Grim wrote:While I will probably always prefer the IDW version of Pax the cop and Megatron the Miner come revolutionary, I will always welcome new ideas.

I've always been more of a fan of the Aligned data clerk origin vs the IDW cop origin, but that may just be because I didn't love IDW Prime in particular.

But miner-gladiator-revolutionary Megatron is unmatched. That, to me, is the definitive Megatron origin story. (Although I do love the Armada-esque "opposing military commander with respect for his rival" take on the character too)

Re: Transformers One is Revealed to Have a very Modest Budget (view post)

Comment by o.supreme Sep 19, 2024

Big Grim wrote:
#1 Signal Lancer fan wrote:Gods, I miss Prime. I don't understand why these shows aren't easy to get on Blu-Ray.

Well they aren't too ridiculous yet. Id get them while you can. I got all Prime the blu rays when they were first released. But right now on Amazon S1 is about$38, S2 is $48, S3 is $20, and Predacons Rising is: $15, so the whole series for around $120. It could be far worse, once these really go OOP.

As for the TF One film budget. I bet at least a third of it was the celebrity VA's. salary. I've noticed with the Godzilla Monsterverse entries, each one gets bigger in spectacle, but they choose actors who are less famous, which actually helps. Kong Skull island was loaded with A List actors , but arguably was far more expensive because of it. GxK actually had a cheaper budget, but more went into the story and Effects than the actors.

I appreciate that the A List actors for TF One are getting praised, but if we had actual industry VA's the budget for this film could have been under 50M, and would have been just as well liked I'd imagine.

Re: Transformers One is Revealed to Have a very Modest Budget (view post)

Comment by william-james88 Sep 19, 2024

At Cinemacon, we saw an Orion Pax popcorn bucket that seemed transformable. We have since seen the Cinemark popcorn buckets for Transformers One, which you can see below, and those did not include that transforming bucket. And now we know how AMC's Transformers One popcorn bucket looks like and it is not that either. So that Orion Pax transforming popcorn bucket is MIA.

For AMC, it turns out their bucket is unoriginal. It's just a tin with the characters on it. They also have cups with toppers.

For Cinemark, you will see below that they offer a B-127 Popcorn Container with lanyard , an Orion Pax Snack & Drink Vessel, a Cup and Topper Combo Set, Fleece Blanket and Enamel 4-Pin Set.

You can see all images below.

AMC