Michael Bay’s Franchise-Killing Flop Gets Slain by 2025’s Biggest Surprise Hit

Having passed what will likely be its final global box office milestone, the year’s biggest surprise hit, Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Movie: Infinity Castle, is slaying considerably larger monsters in its path. The moviehas broken several records over the course of its theatrical run. For instance, it became the first anime film to gross over $100 million at the domestic box office, and eventually passed its predecessor, Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Movie: Mugen Train, to become the biggest anime movie in global box office history. The Demon Slayer franchise has been building a massive (and devoted) audience over the last few years, thanks to its availability on streaming.

With over $120 million domestically and nearly $500 million from overseas markets — of this total, $200 million has come from the film’s home country of Japan — Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle‘s global box office haul stands at around $620 million. This puts the blockbuster movie above past hits such as Men in Black, War of the Worlds, and Logan. It has also overtaken the lifetime global hauls of this year’s Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning, and James Gunn‘s Superman. Among its most recent conquests is Michael Bay‘s final Transformers movie, Transformers: The Last Knight.

Released in 2017, the film served as a follow-up to Transformers: Age of Extinction, which made over $1.1 billion at the global box office. The Last Knight, however, ended its run with a $605 million haul. This made it Bay’s lowest-grossing Transformers movie. Produced on a reported budget of more than $200 million, The Last Knight was also the worst-reviewed Transformers film on the aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, where it currently holds a 16% score. Years later, Bay admitted in an interview that executive producer Steven Spielberg told him to stop making these movies after the third one, but he was tempted by the offers he was receiving.

The Future of the Transformers Franchise Is Uncertain

The franchise has since been rebooted twice, with Bumblebee and Transformers: Rise of the Beasts. An unrelated animated offering, produced perhaps to replicate the success of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, tanked commercially last year. The future of the Transformers franchise remains unclear, but with Paramount having undergone a major behind-the-scenes shake-up recently, one can expect some fresh announcements soon. Stay tuned to Collider for more updates.