As much as I enjoyed that very first live-action Transformers film from Michael Bay, there is little denying that it’s never been the franchise of quality. After that first film, the storytelling in the film series quickly careened off of a cliff, pretty much sacrificing character for scope and action, and before long, folks began to associate it more with grinding metal and long, boring action sequences than the titular Transformers that initially drew audiences to it in a first place.

But could that change? We recently saw the trailer for the upcoming Transformers spin-off, Bumblebee, and upon seeing that, it became clear that they could end up going in a more personal direction with these franchise. With Bay gone and Kubo and the Two Strings helmer Travis Knight taking on this film, he is paving the way for a new, hopefully, more quality-driven, direction for the film. I think few would argue against the idea that this change was overdue, and film producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura seems to understand that, as he said in an interview with EW.

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“If you don’t change up, you’re also taking a risk. It’s one of those things where there is no simple answer. You’re taking a risk no matter what you do when you make a big expensive movie, so why not change the formula completely and really hang in there?”

But why change the formula? Well, as many of you likely know, this franchise was cracking $1 billion with damn near every film for a while. However, with last year’s Transformers: The Last Knight, their revenue took a nosedive, only taking in $605 million worldwide.

“The fifth one was definitely down. The audience looks for something new at some point in time, but it’s so hard to judge when. I think the lesson was, after the fourth movie, that was the when. But we didn’t see the fatigue. We didn’t see the signs that they wanted us to change up how we were presenting it.”

It’d be easy to poke fun at this statement. I’m sure some of you are saying, “We’ve been sick of these movies from the beginning.” But the box-office tells a different tale, regardless of what vocal film fans may say. There was little indication based on the box-office that it would be slowing down any time soon.

Better late than never, right?

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SOURCE: EW