Bumblebee has a glowing score of 93% on Rotten Tomatoes but with a modest $459 million haul at the worldwide box office, you just know Paramount Pictures is wondering what went wrong and why the
Transformers spinoff didn't reach the same $1 billion heights as
Aquaman (also released in December).
Well, it appears as if the solution to that is to attempt to find a combination of the heart and focus on storytelling found in Bumblebee, and the busy action scenes in Michael Bay's movies.
"I know the next Transformer, our attempt anyway, is to sort of do a fusion of Bumblebee and the Bay movies," producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura revealed in a recent interview. "A little more Bayhem. And a little bit more of the character falling in love within the emotional dynamic of the movie."
"One of the things I want to do—and I hope we pull it off—is, we did it with Bumblebee because he’s so cute and he’s so accessible, but he can’t talk. I think the more human we can make these characters, the more people are going to like them."
The producer went on to confirm that the sequel will revolve around Optimus Prime and Bumblebee, so it now seems like we're returning to regular
Transformers movies rather than a standalone adventure like
Bumblebee which wasn't packed full of Autobots battling Decepticons with the story taking a backseat. Needless to say, this is bound to disappoint some fans.
Then again, this might just be the right combination for box office success. Time will tell.