Forbes business magazine is looking into the fact how Pirates of the Caribbean and Transformers Live Action Movies became money-spinners and how much of an impact their content brought in.
“[T]hat’s not to say that kids of all ages/generations don’t still watch the various incarnations of the Transformers animated television shows (I’m told Beast Wars was quite good). But there is a pretty decent chance that when most people think of said properties, they think of the films first and the related content second.
And yeah, in 2017, Paramount/Viacom Inc.’s Transformers is known as much (if not more so) for the Michael Bay-directed blockbusters as it is for the earliest incarnation of said brand. The first Transformers turns ten this year, and I will argue that it was something of a groundbreaking blockbuster in that it was a nostalgia-driven “kid film” arguably targeted at adults. And its last two (3D-enhanced) films topped $1 billion worldwide despite sliding domestic totals ($353m and $245m in 2011 and 2014). While The Last Knight may mark another domestic downturn when it opens on June 23rd, overseas may pick up the slack. I would argue that the films are now more popular and more well known than the original source material. Now even if there was no source material, the long, sprawling, candy-colored, metal-crunching, carnage-filled action films filled with giant robots fighting each other, as they turn into cars and planes, alongside ridiculously attractive humans would have caught on around the world. Without getting into critical discussions, the Transformers films are very appealing for a worldwide cinematic audience even if you’ve never heard of the action figures.
Putting aside for a moment that movies on the scale of Transformers and (especially) Pirates of the Caribbean were less common when said franchises first began than they are today, both long-running success stories show the promise (and often false hope) of making a movie out of something that wasn’t initially a movie. It’s not just that the Transformers movies and the Pirates movies made a lot of money. It’s that, 10-14 years later, I would argue the movie versions of these popular brands have surpassed the original variations in the pop culture zeitgeist. That’s… not unimpressive.”
Check out the full article at Forbes.
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