China Loves 'Transformers: The Last Knight'

To the surprise of absolutely no one, Paramount's Transformers: The Last Knight made a major ruckus at the Chinese box office over the weekend.

The fifth installment in Michael Bay's critically maligned, commercially smash-successful franchise opened to a huge $123 million in the Middle Kingdom. And yet, some in the market might view that tally as just a touch disappointing. Going into the summer, the big question for China industry watchers was whether Universal's Fast 8 or Paramount's T5 would emerge as 2017's local box-office champ. It's now clear that Vin Diesel and company have the title locked up: The Fate of the Furious opened to $190 million on its way to a historic $393 million China haul.

Still, a $123 million opening is nothing to scoff at whatsoever.

For starters, the film's China debut is close to double its disappointing $69.1 million North American opening. It's also considerably better than Transformers: Age of Extinction's $92 million full first week in China in 2014. Back then, however, Hollywood films tended to be far leggier in China — whether T5 can match T4's eventual $320 million Sino tally remains in question given the way U.S. action tentpoles have tended to drop off recently.

Read the rest of this article at The Hollywood Reporter.

The Last Knight pulled in the lowest opening-weekend domestic gross in the franchise to date.