10 Recent Movie Flops EVERYONE Saw Coming

Once upon a time, the Transformers franchise was an unsinkable box officer juggernaut, with Michael Bay's first four live-action films grossing over $3.7 billion combined.

But there's no denying that mainstream interest in Transformers movies has been on the downslide for years now, with Transformers: The Last Knight, Bumblebee, and Transformers: Rise of the Beasts making decidedly more modest returns on their budgets.

And so, even with animation being an easy hit for younger audiences, it was easy to question the prospects of Transformers One - a standalone animated origin story with a production budget reportedly anywhere between $75 million and $147 million.

Even if we charitably accept the lower figure as correct, its current box office performance sees it falling far short of the approximate break-even number of $187.5 million.

And much of the blame can be pointed towards the film's marketing, as its woeful first trailer sadly killed much mainstream interest. 

Despite being well-received by critics and those audiences who did venture out to see it, the PR damage had been irreversibly done.

For all the bad that can be said about the Bayverse era of Transformers films, they certainly put a ton of butts in seats, and it wasn't much of a shock that this more niche, source-faithful take failed to catch on with casual viewers.