Thank you Peter Jackson (yes Sheldon, sarcasm). Apparently after seeing the success of franchises planning out trilogies and shooting everything back to back (with the idea that it’s cheaper to shoot them all at once than separately), with the obvious examples being Peter Jackon’s ‘Lord of the Rings’ and ‘Hobbit’ films (Jackson started the trend with the ‘Lord of the Rings’ trilogy), as well as the state of the new ‘Star Wars’ trilogy and James Cameron’s new ‘Avatar’ trilogy, it seems Paramount has decided that their highest grossing franchise, ‘Transformers,’ has just not been pushing out enough films, and has hired scribe Akiva Goldsman (‘A Beautiful Mind’) to shepherd and oversee new multiple film scripts planning on writing the next few sequels all together to tie into one another, as well as coming up with opportunities for spin-offs of the franchise, milking the robots for all that they are worth.
Why would they make this asinine decision in the wake of ‘Transformers: Age of Extinction,‘ arguably the worse of all of the ‘Transformers’ films, panned by both critics and domestic audiences alike? Because despite all of that, it made BANK. If you look at the numbers, ‘Transformers: Age of Extinction’ made nearly 1.1 billion dollars last year, and was the top grossing release ever in China, and according to ‘Deadline,’ the film was named the Most Valuable Blockbuster of 2014 in the annual breakdown of top domestic grossing blockbuster movies. Which is sickening, as it means A.) People went out to see the movie despite the terrible reviews and general downward spiral of the franchise, and B.) Paramount could give a damn about whether or not the film was good, as long as it made money, which is the attitude that is killing Hollywood.
At least Sony, when Sam Raimi’s ‘Spider-Man 3’ came out (which critics and audiences alike despised), ignored the massive profits from the film and made changes to attempt to get the film quality back up to par, as opposed to Paramount who doesn’t seem to see anything wrong with the current state of affairs for ‘Transformers.’ Sure, hiring an Academy Award winning writer like Goldsman may help, but sources are pretty sure Goldsman is not actually writing any of the new movies, instead he is hiring writers and generally overseeing the storyline of the movies. And of course, Michael Bay will continue to direct, which in the end means we won’t be seeing much difference in the new crop of ‘Transformers.’
What are your thoughts? Do you want to see the market saturated with more of the transforming robot franchise? Let us know in the comments below
