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Paramount’s and Hasbro’s Transformers: The Last Knight launched Tuesday night with $5.5 million in previews from 3,000 theaters in North America as the fifth outing in the franchise begins its global assault.
According to prerelease tracking, The Last Knight is projected to post a five-day domestic debut in the $70 million-$75 million range, notably behind the $100 million North American launch of the last title, Transformers: Age of Extinction, over the three-day June 27-29 weekend in 2014 and the lowest in the Hasbro toy-based series.
Instead, the Michael Bay-directed film, costing is counting on doing big business overseas. Paramount puts the production budget at $217 million before a major marketing spend.
The Last Knight opens in its first 42 foreign territories this weekend, including a slew of major markets, such as China, the U.K., Russia, Australia, Germany, Italy, North Korea and Hong Kong.
Mark Wahlberg returns to star in The Last Knight — he made his franchise debut in the last film — while Laura Haddock and Anthony Hopkins join the series as an Oxford professor and English lord, respectively. Together, the three characters must race to uncover the secret history of the Transformers before the world is destroyed.
Josh Duhamel, who appeared in the first three Transformers movies but sat out Age of Extinction, also stars.
The Last Knight is the only new film opening nationwide this weekend. The specialty box office sees the debut of two high-profile titles in select theaters Friday: Focus Features’ The Beguiled, from director Sofia Coppola, and Lionsgate’s The Big Sick, helmed by Michael Showalter.
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