Everyone has an eight-year-old boy living inside them, and "Transformers" is the ticket that brings this boy out. "Transformers" is not just a movie; it's a marker of an era, filled with the dreams of a generation about science fiction. The development of the film industry has allowed this robot war to be perfectly presented on the screen, making it a milestone in cinema.
Of course, despite the flaws in "Transformers" with its pacing issues, most of the time, the movie turned one classic after another, which could only be seen in dreams, into a tangible reality. Because of this excitement, when Optimus Prime and the Decepticons fought on the screen, the passionate spirit of American heroism was best ignited.
As a result, the film's box office success came as no surprise.
In its first weekend, "Transformers" grossed $92.1 million in North America, far exceeding Paramount Pictures' expected $75 million.
What was unexpected was the massive number of fans who joined the ranks of supporting Megatron and the Decepticons. It seemed the villains were more popular than the heroes.
"How to say it? Many fans are fervently supporting Megatron."
In the office of Paramount Pictures, CEO Brad Grey looked at Spielberg across from him and said, "Many people have left messages on Paramount's official website, requesting a standalone Megatron movie."
Spielberg pushed up his glasses. "This is probably a chain reaction brought by Matthew Horner."
Brad Grey nodded lightly. "We never expected Matthew Horner's personal appeal to be so significant."
"The first weekend's box office explains it." Spielberg said.
"Yes, the first weekend's box office exceeded expectations by $17 million." Brad Grey detailed, "The original estimate of $75 million was already a conclusion drawn by Paramount Pictures after considering all factors, including Matthew Horner's appeal, but..."
He couldn't help but shake his head. "We still underestimated Matthew Horner. While I can't say the extra $17 million all came from his market appeal, a large part of it did."
Spielberg smiled. "Every dollar DreamWorks spent on Matthew Horner was worth it."
"Yes, indeed worth it."
Brad Grey couldn't help but think of Tom Cruise, who had been in long-term cooperation with Paramount Pictures. Was the return on the money Paramount invested in him every year worth it? Although Tom Cruise was a superstar, looking at these past two years, his commercial appeal was significantly less than Matthew Horner's.
Even excluding the salary, Paramount Pictures paid Tom Cruise an annual cooperation fee of $10 million. Adding in the salary, Tom Cruise was practically bleeding Paramount dry.
Even if he was bleeding them dry, what returns did he bring to Paramount?
Thinking of this, Brad Grey asked, "Steven, aren't you considering developing a standalone series for Megatron?"
"Well..." Spielberg put down the camera, showing his businessman nature. "There's no such plan for now, but it can be considered."
Then, he realized another difficulty. Megatron's popularity came partly from inherent popularity support and partly from the voice actor. DreamWorks was already preparing to develop a sequel, and Matthew Horner wasn't part of the sequel's plan because his voice acting fee was too high. But without Matthew Horner, would Megatron still return?
If they continued using Matthew Horner, he felt Helen Herman, that greedy woman, would dare to ask for $20 million for voice acting.
This was indeed a dilemma, one to be discussed in detail with Michael Bay later.
After chatting for a while, Spielberg left Paramount Pictures. Brad Grey thought for a moment and called his assistant. "Fount, I remember Matthew Horner and Larry Ellison's son were preparing to shoot a movie together recently. Look into it."
The assistant seemed quite informed and said directly, "They bought the rights to the 'Fast & Furious' series from Universal Pictures and are preparing to invest in the production. The director was finalized just last month."
Brad Grey then asked, "Have they settled on distribution?"
"They haven't." The assistant continued, "I haven't heard anything about that."
Brad Grey instructed, "Alright, check it out. If they haven't signed a distribution agreement, have someone from the distribution department contact them to see if we can secure the distribution rights for Matthew Horner's new film."
After hanging up, he sat at his desk for a while, thinking that Paramount Pictures couldn't rely solely on Tom Cruise. It was time to find a new star to replace him.
If it weren't for Tom Cruise holding the rights to the "Mission: Impossible" series, he would have kicked him out long ago.
Matthew Horner might be a better supplement than Tom Cruise.
With "Transformers" hitting the box office big, it naturally didn't lack attention from entertainment media. Apart from the film itself, many media reports focused on Matthew, believing his voice acting gave Megatron a wild and domineering leader aura that was more attractive than the quiet and reserved Optimus Prime.
Some media even declared: "Matthew Horner's starred movies sell well, and those he voice acts in also do well. His market appeal is undeniable!"
Cinema Score's founder, Ed Mintz, exaggeratedly said in an interview: "As long as Matthew Horner stars in a film, it guarantees at least a $15 million opening weekend."
Matthew didn't expect "Transformers" to perform so well in its opening weekend. With a $90 million opening, as long as the following weeks didn't collapse, it was highly likely to gross over $300 million in North America. This would allow Michael Bay to make a comeback and shake off the bad luck he had since the new century began.
This, of course, had many benefits for him, further proving his eye for selecting films and projects, and it could lead more people to follow his lead.
However, passing "John Carter of Mars" to Brad Pitt wasn't easy.
After seeing the first weekend box office statistics for "Transformers," Matthew specifically looked at the film's reviews. The box office and reviews reflected his usual style: booming box office, poor professional reviews.
On the popular review site "Rotten Tomatoes," "Transformers" had a 57% positive rating, which was mixed. The positive reviews were like: "While credible characters are hard to find in 'Transformers,' its visual effects are stunning, and the action scenes are exhilarating."
The positive comments mostly praised the visuals and action scenes; the criticism focused on the plot and characters. Many well-known critics gave it bad reviews.
Especially the famous critic Roger Ebert, who harshly ridiculed the film with unprecedented sharp words.
"Watching 'Transformers' is a terrible experience, unbearably long, with only three or four brief moments of interest, and even those moments are insignificant. If you want to save on tickets, just go to your kitchen, play some hellish music with a male vocal track, bang on pots and pans, and imagine—a clumsy movie idiot with a giant body but slow actions."
"The film's plot is confusing, the dialogue is full of nonsense, and utterly meaningless. The Autobots and Decepticons' Brooklyn, British, and hip-hop accents seem to come from distant planets, while their designs look like they came from a junkyard. Silent as rocks, the human characters are slightly more interesting, but there is hardly anything praiseworthy about them."
"The battle scenes in the movie are chaotic; watching individual models offers no visual enjoyment, but when two or three robots are tangled together, it creates a particularly confusing scene. I find it particularly amusing that four-story-tall robots also use fists to fight. They are usually silent, with pitifully small heads, like watching paint dry while being hit in the head with a frying pan..."
If a movie had been attacked and ridiculed by Roger Ebert like this a decade or two ago, its box office performance would have been dismal. However, the era of film critics was over. Even though Roger Ebert's influence remained significant, the main audience for commercial films didn't care much about critics' reviews.
If one chose movies based on critics' reviews, there would be few enjoyable films to watch throughout the year.
All the negative reviews were as fragile as soap bubbles blown by a child in the face of Optimus Prime and Megatron's showdown, easily burst. Over the following week, "Transformers" continued its aggressive box office run, grossing $50.2 million in its second weekend, pushing its North American box office total past the $200 million mark.
Anyone could see that $300 million was not the limit for this film's North American box office.
At the same time, DreamWorks and Paramount Pictures officially announced that "Transformers 2" was already on the agenda.
DreamWorks also contacted Helen Herman, seemingly wanting to explore the possibility of Matthew continuing to voice Megatron. Helen Herman unceremoniously asked for $20 million for voice acting, causing DreamWorks to retreat immediately.
Whether DreamWorks would follow up or not, Matthew didn't care.
He arrived at Warner Bros. Studios to prepare for the mid-July shooting of "Hancock."
This film had been in preparation since last year. If not for coordinating his schedule, filming would have started last month. Matthew had always had a good reputation in the crew and was very mindful of it. From the moment he joined the "Hancock" crew, he temporarily set aside other matters and focused entirely on this film.
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