Transformers Box Office: Every Film, Budget and Worldwide Total

Nine Transformers films have earned about $5.43 billion worldwide, on budgets that run from $75 million to $217 million. The table gives each film's budget, domestic gross and worldwide gross, with Box Office Mojo as the source for grosses and for most budgets. The two spin-offs sit at the top and bottom of the list by release date, and the seven main films run between them from Transformers (2007) to Transformers: Rise of the Beasts (2023).

The highest grossing Transformers movie is Transformers: Dark of the Moon, directed by Michael Bay, with $1.12 billion worldwide on a $195 million budget. Only one other film in the series, Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014), also passed the $1 billion mark, at $1.10 billion. Those two films supply $1.12 billion and $1.10 billion of the $5.43 billion the whole franchise has taken.

The five Bay films from Transformers 2007 through Transformers The Last Knight took about $4.38 billion between them. The two later main films, Bumblebee (2018) directed by Travis Knight and Rise of the Beasts (2023) directed by Steven Caple Jr., took about $910 million combined. That gap is the main reason the series total looks so top heavy.

A few other records are easy to mix up. Transformers Revenge of the Fallen (2009) has the best domestic gross at $402 million, while Age of Extinction has the best international gross at $859 million. Among the main films, Rise of the Beasts earned the least worldwide, and Bumblebee movie has the lowest domestic gross at $127 million.

Budgets are less settled than grosses. Box Office Mojo lists $135 million for Bumblebee (2018), while The Numbers lists a noticeably lower figure. The Numbers also puts Revenge of the Fallen at $210 million against Box Office Mojo's $200 million. The budgets for Rise of the Beasts and Transformers One come from The Numbers, and neither Box Office Mojo nor The Numbers lists a budget for the 1986 film, Transformers the Movie 1986, which Nelson Shin directed and DEG distributed.

For the full list of titles and where each one sits in the story, see how many Transformers movies and Transformers movies in order. For streaming options, see where to watch Transformers.

Measured against budget, Dark of the Moon was the strongest performer and Transformers One the weakest, and every film with a listed budget returned more than that budget at the worldwide box office. A gross is not a profit, so the ratios below only show relative strength. My arithmetic from the Box Office Mojo and The Numbers figures gives roughly 5.8 times budget for Dark of the Moon, 5.3 for Age of Extinction, 4.7 for Transformers (2007), 4.2 for Revenge of the Fallen, 3.5 for Bumblebee (2018), 2.8 for The Last Knight, 2.3 for Rise of the Beasts and 1.7 for Transformers One.

Why did Dark of the Moon top the list? In my opinion, the release strategy deserves part of the credit. The film had its world premiere at the Moscow International Film Festival on June 23, 2011, opened wide in the US on June 29, and went out in 3D and IMAX. International business made up $771 million of the total. It could be argued that the 3D and IMAX screens lifted the average ticket price, though the figures cannot prove that.

Age of Extinction is the more interesting shape. Its domestic gross fell to $245 million from $352 million for Dark of the Moon, yet its international gross rose to $859 million, so more than three quarters of its money came from outside the US. The film held its world premiere in Hong Kong on June 19, 2014, which fits a release built around overseas audiences. The Last Knight then carried the biggest budget in the series at $217 million and managed only $130 million at home, the weakest domestic result of the Bay films, and finished at $605 million worldwide.

Bumblebee (2018) and Rise of the Beasts (2023) tell different stories about the reset. The 2018 film cost $135 million on Box Office Mojo's figure and returned $468 million, with $127 million domestic. Rise of the Beasts cost $195 million, the same listed budget as Dark of the Moon, and took $442 million, less than half of the 2011 film's total. Perhaps the fairest reading is that Bumblebee (2018) was the more efficient restart, since Rise of the Beasts earned more at home ($157 million) but less abroad ($284 million against $341 million) on a bigger budget.

The spin-offs sit apart. The 1986 film took $10.9 million worldwide, with no budget published by either source, so no ratio is possible. Transformers One (2024), directed by Josh Cooley, cost $75 million, the lowest listed budget among the modern films, and earned $129 million. That is the weakest ratio of the group, although it still returned its cost, and I would argue a Cybertron origin story was always going to be a smaller bet than a Bay summer tentpole.

The next entry has no numbers to report yet. According to TheWrap, the new Transformers movie is in development at Paramount and Hasbro with Jason Fuchs writing, Steven Spielberg overseeing the franchise and Michael Bay in early talks to direct, and no release date has been announced. If you would rather sort these films by quality than by money, Transformers movies ranked puts them in our own order, and that order does not follow the money.