It’s learned Paramount is in the hot seat over a string of poor performing movies at the box office.
It’s said execs from Viacom (Paramount’s parent company) are flying to China to assuage the fears and assure China their upcoming slate of movies will be better.
China isn’t happy with the recent performances of Transformers: The Last Knight, Ghost in the Shell and Baywatch and are said to be worried Paramount can’t put out good movies for their international audience.
“We have incurred losses for the first months of the current year,” a source to Variety said. “These are not trivial losses; they are huge losses.”
Regarding Transformers: The Last Knight, it’s currently Paramount poorest performing Transformers movie of all time, and it made a lot less than Age of Extinction did in China. As noted, The Last Knight made almost $100 million less in China.
The report further mentions if things don’t improve over at Paramount in the next 12-24 months that China might have the ability to get out of their contract.
Transformers: The Last Knight has a current worldwide box office gross of just $570 million, which isn’t a lot considering the movie cost over $200 million to make. Age of Extinction finished over a billion at the box office.
Ghost in the Shell finished at $169.8 million on a reported $110 million budget, and the Dwayne Johnson Baywatch movie has a $174 million gross on a $69 million budget.
Up next for Paramount and their Transformers franchise is a Bumblebee period piece starring John Cena set in the 80’s about a girl who is a mechanic.
