Box Office: 'Transformers One' Disappoints With $9.6M Friday

With overseas grosses yet to be revealed, Paramount and Hasbro's shockingly good origin story toon might be another 'Solo,' 'Lightyear' and 'Furiosa'-type miscalculation.

On Friday, Hasbro and Paramount’s Transformers One topped the domestic box office with $9.56 million. That includes $3.4 million on Thursday previews and suggests an opening weekend of just $26.3 million. That’s halfway decent by the standards of animated films based on existing IPs that have previously/mostly played (theatrically speaking) in the live-action space. I have fond memories of my, uh, “private screening” of Warner Bros.’ Batman: Mask of the Phantasm on Christmas Day of 1993. Sony’s Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, with a month of rave reviews and the “Miles Morales for the first time” factor, opened with $35 million in December 2018. However, that film had the holiday blitz season on which to capitalize. Even Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem pulled $28 million over a Fri-Sun part of a $45 million Wed-Sun debut in August 2023. However, with unexpectedly strong reviews (from a surprisingly good movie) and solid buzz heading into the weekend, what went... well, not “wrong” but maybe “less right” than hoped?