Paramount Pulls TRANSFORMERS 6 From Release Schedule

Paramount has taken the sixth, untitled Transformers film off of their release calendar. It had originally been set to hit theaters on June 28, 2019.

It is not that surprising though, that Paramount has taken the film off its schedule. For a while, the Transformers franchise was pretty much a license to print money for the studio. However, last summer’s The Last Knight only pulled in $605 million at the worldwide box office. But compare that to the previous franchise entry, 2014’s Age Of Extinction, and it’s worldwide box office gross of $1.1 billion, and you see that The Last Knight dropped nearly 50% in ticket sales. And with a reported budget of $217 million, it is very conceivable that The Last Knight did not make it into the black.

It wasn’t too long ago that the studio looked to be going all in on the Transformers franchise. A writers room generated a number of film ideas including the ones for The Last Knight, the Bumblebee spinoff coming later this December and an animated feature. There is no word as to the fate of the untitled animated feature, which reportedly would have featured the civil war on the planet Cybertron that led the heroic Autobot Transformers to come to Earth followed by their nemesis the Decepticons.

Last February, Hasbro indicated that the franchise was due for a reboot, most likely to put it in line with their toy properties that were getting the big screen treatment in a hoped for cinematic universe. The toy maker-turned-studio hopes that this plan will also encompass franchises like GI Joe and Micronauts, both of which have films scheduled for 2020. At the time, Hasbro noted that they have a a “Paramount/Hasbro Event Film” set for 2021. Will this be when they reintroduce the Transformers onto the silver screen? Time will tell.