Most observers expected the film to crack $100 million (Sony's own prediction was a conservative $80 million), but by the end of the weekend, Sony was estimating that the franchise reboot had premiered with $117.0 million. It's the biggest single-character series launcher ever for the Marvel Cinematic Universe (beating the $98.6 million opening of "Iron Man"), the second-biggest debut of the six Spidey movies (beaten only by the $151.1 million debut of "Spider-Man 3" a decade ago), and the third-largest premiere of any movie in 2017 (behind "Beauty and the Beast" and "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2").
That's good news for a box office that, throughout the first half of the summer season, has seen one disappointment after another. After a series of high-profile sequel flops and failed franchise launchers, this summer has made 2017 fall behind 2016 in total grosses, though the success of the new "Spider-Man" has helped close the gap, to the point where domestic grosses are now only about $12 million behind where they were at this point a year ago.
This wouldn't have been a problem for "Homecoming," which scored a 93 percent fresh rating at RT. But social media research firm Fizzology claimed recently that it's found high RT scores have little impact on a film's online buzz, while low RT scores do result in a surge of discouraging social media chatter. It's not clear, though, whether that negative buzz has a measurable impact on sales.
It's certainly true that positive RT scores may not help a film at the box office. That was the case this summer with "It Comes at Night," a horror movie that bombed last month despite strong reviews. Conversely, negative reviews didn't hurt sales of "Batman v Superman" or "Suicide Squad."
Still, how long can that business model persist? The makers of "Transformers: The Last Knight" crowed about how well the film did in China, where its $120 million debut was one of the largest ever for a Hollywood import, and where its $198 million total to date represents the biggest contribution of any country's sales to the movie's $495 million global total. Even so, Chinese grosses won't be enough. With a $217 million production budget, plus marketing and distribution costs, "The Last Knight" would have to gross about $1 billion worldwide to break even, yet this looks like the first "Transformers" film since the second one that won't cross that 10-figure threshold . Besides, distributor Paramount will get to keep only about a fourth of that $198 million Chinese gross (the rest goes to theater owners), while it'll get about half of the movie's domestic gross ($119 million and counting). So domestic sales will still bring in more profit than Chinese sales, and that's for a sequel that's far and away the least popular of the five "Transformers" films among American audiences. Imagine if they'd made a movie that ticket buyers here actually liked.
"Homecoming," at least, won't have that problem. Sure, it's also doing better overseas than here (it's made an estimated $140 million abroad so far), but the proportions aren't totally out of whack like they are for "Transformers" (which has earned 76 percent of its total overseas) and many other summer movies that underwhelmed in North America compared to foreign markets. Like "Guardians Vol. 2," "Homecoming" has earned a solid 45 percent of its total to date in North America. For "Wonder Woman," it's nearly 50-50. So it's still a good idea to make movies with some domestic appeal. After all, as "The Last Knight" proves, you can't count on the inferior taste of foreign audiences forever.
