14 DAY TRIAL // Uh oh, Paramount. The other day, the studio released the box office figures for their latest release, the fourth installment in the “Transformers” franchise, the Michael Bay-directed “Age of Extinction,” and they came as confirmation that, no matter how dumb, these movies are sure winners: Paramount claimed the weekend international and domestic gross was of $302.1 million (€220.7 million).
Over $100 million (€73.08 million) of the overall tally came from US theaters, Paramount also said, which makes “Age of Extinction” the biggest release of the summer and of 2014 so far, but also one of the strongest openers ever. Again, this is confirmation that “Transformers” sell despite the critical backlash against them.
However, not all is as great as Paramount makes it sound, Deadline has uncovered. While “Age of Extinction” did perform wonderfully at the domestic and international box office, it didn’t really perform as wonderfully as the studio would have you believe.
In the US, for instance, it fell short of $100 million (€73.08 million) by only very little, actual figures obtained by the trade publication indicate – so the studio inflated the amount to this record one.
Domestically, “Age of Extinction” made $98 million (€72.3 million) tops, while internationally it grossed $299.6 million (€218.95 million). The difference between the actual numbers and those reported by Paramount is by no means major (what’s a few millions to a production as huge as “Transformers”?), but it’s not entirely lacking importance.
“What better headlines to please the bosses and shareholders with: A $100M domestic and over $300M worldwide. The only problem? It’s a public company and there are strict guidelines about this type of thing,” Deadline says.
“One insider at Paramount with knowledge of the financials told Deadline that there have been concerns that there could be more layoffs if Transformers 4 didn’t hit the $100M mark. So maybe that’s what’s going on. Even so, everyone in town — and I mean everyone – has it much less than $100M. Hey, as one my colleagues just said, the movie itself is inflated to 2 hours and 45 minutes, so why not the box office grosses, too?” adds the same media outlet.
Several distribution partners tell Deadline that there’s no way “Transformers” made $100 million in US theaters on its opening weekend, and figures from Rentrack confirm that this is impossible.
So, if the studio didn’t lie to avoid layoffs, then there can be only one reason for the inflated box office gross: they did it because they thought it would make them look better if they said the film had reached the $100 million threshold domestically in the opening weekend. It was a question of ego and of making themselves look good.
This in itself wouldn’t be such a horrible thing because, after all, perhaps not many keep track of films’ box office performances and, if the movie is a hit, then it’s a hit: fans don’t really care about how much money the studio makes. But other studios and industry people do. If Paramount wanted to lie about it, it might as well have made sure it would never get caught.