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Kim Hollis: Transformers: Age of Extinction, the latest in the Michael Bay franchise, earned $100 million in its debut weekend (and $90 million in China alone, more than double the previous record in that country). What do you think of this result?

Edwin Davies: The Chinese total is the more interesting part of this result. As David pointed out in the Weekend Wrap-up, China as a territory has barely been tapped as a source of revenue by American studios, largely due to restrictions that have been placed on how many foreign films can open there. Yet studios have persisted because, even though they get a smaller piece of the pie when it comes to the profits from films being released in China, the pie in question is VAST; it's easy to imagine the right Hollywood blockbuster earning a billion dollars in China alone, and even if studios are only taking home 10% of that, that's still a huge amount of money. Age of Extinction seems like it could represent a tipping point for Hollywood in that regard, since it's proof that if you target a film at the Chinese market - large parts of the film are set in China and a reality show was used to choose some of the Chinese cast members - it can yield the sort of results they've been dreaming of for years.

As far as the domestic opening goes, it's impressive (though I have my doubts that the actual total is accurate; this smacks of spin on the part of the studio so that they could say they had the first $100 million opening of the year) but I think it shows continued diminishing returns for the franchise. It's hard to do an apples-to-apples comparison since each of the previous installments opened mid-week, but it's notable that Age of Extinction had a lower Saturday and Sunday than Revenge of the Fallen and Dark of the Moon, both of which had already burned off $91 million and $64 million worth of demand before their first Friday. That suggests to me that a lot of people have been lost interest, or that they're waiting until the July 4th weekend to catch up. Either way, I'd be very surprised if Age of Extinction makes it to $300 million or if it avoids the sort of shocking drops that hit both Godzilla and The Amazing Spider-Man 2.

Bruce Hall: Even if the $100 million figure fails to hold, unless everyone suddenly forgot how to do math we're going to see an actual result in excess of Godzilla. Transformers is likely to walk away with bragging rights and I don't see it losing them in the next few weeks. In fact, let's just be frank about what has happened this weekend:

* This may be the worst reviewed movie of Michael Bay's career (which is really saying something), and if like most people you believe Rotten Tomatoes is God, barely half the people who saw it seem to have enjoyed it. Still, by the time we wake up tomorrow it will have officially earned the biggest opening weekend of the year.

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