Hasbro has had so much time and opportunity to do this already and have blown it. Disney is the easy saviour option right now unless they really make something special with the Bee movie.

 

They can still appeal to the video game media.

 

Rom, Micronauts, and Inhumanoids would go forward faster actually. They are easier to fit into the larger Disney areas like a Rom and Stitch crossover or Inhumanoids and Mech X4, Micronauts and Ant-Man. GI Joe would go away entirely though. Disney doesn't do much with military at all for kids, and MASK could end up as anything new that fans would complain about non-stop because of how it's kid focused. Jem would probably become a new "Hannah Montana" for Disney as well.

But Disney wouldn't do this. They could create mirror franchises that offer much of the same aspects in new ways. Like stated, they already have Mech X4 for their giant robo series. They already have Lab rats/Mighty Med for their bionic/alien/superhero stuff, and Hannah Montana already was Jem in new packaging.

So as investments go, it'd make no sense for Disney outside of Transformers, Micronauts, Rom, and My Little Pony.
Though I do have to admit Stitch in a transformers special, or a Rom and Stitch crossover does sound appealing. Everything else would be rather weird. Even if it could allow a Kingdom Hearts Crossover too, it'd still be pretty weird.

Hasbro has had some great work that has gone forward though of their own. Renegades was amazing on the Hub and was set to make a great larger GI Joe Universe(but then one of the lead artists died that was one of the pivotal backbones of the property). Rescue Bots has been an enduring success, TF Prime won emmy awards. MLP became a massive show juggernaut unto itself. And even the CN RID has been doing fairly well. So I'd like to see where they continue to go from there.

I kind of wish they had kept the Hub going and reinvigorating it with new programming while putting the old in reruns, but at the time they were against a quite heavy fan tirade against having the channel and condemning them(plus the issue in which tier package it was for providers), then Discovery itself hit all sorts of issues with how they were found out they were covering up some rather disgusting actions for one of their reality shows that made discovery network itself look bad and overall better to distance themselves from for the time being.

It was a mish-mash of issues that can't be simplified by saying "It failed" without taking those into consideration. Especially burdensome was the fact that 'fans' would genuinely wish failure on the company or brand in any way. Success for the brand means success for the toy endeavors.

You're kidding right? I like Disney, don't get me wrong. But there is nothing needed to save on Hasbro. Profits are up. Not down. Up. Hasbro themselves are doing fine, and will continue to grow on their own. The budgets for the movies do need to be pulled in some, which is expected. A fifth installment at that kind of budget was risky to begin with, but also deserved as it was a 10th anniversary movie. The Bumblebee movie will let them do a smaller film that's more character driven, and TF6 will look into some more fun things with probably a less than TF5 budget, but still a comfortable enough one for some interesting material. The origin film is anyone's guess either direction, but animation boundaries tend to be cheaper in general than the live/animation hybrids. Paramount also takes more of the burden on those as that movie universe is within their rights (pending any contract re-negotiations to happen or have happened), so as finances go, those don't hurt Hasbro as much as people seem to think. The toys sell, and that's where Hasbro profits on the films. So on their side, the films are a success as long as toys sell. The side media that hasbro does profit on has been doing decently though.

Looking towards the future though, with the 50th anniversary less than 20 years away, it is a good time to start future prepping while letting the current movies finish their thing. So we've got a good 3 movies to come. Then maybe one or two more after depending on how TF6 goes with whatever characters it introduces, then will probably come a brand rest for a bit while they work to bring some other properties to the limelight, and a big splash again for Transformers with films for the 50th.

But again, a lot of that depends on what happens with TF6 and what kind of surge it brings to the franchise.

And while movie comics were great for those that liked them, they weren't selling in high quantities to warrant the cost of making them. While Bay voiced displeasure at the spoiler that happened because of them, they were already not likely to continue after DOTM because of not reaching threshold to sustain themselves. The comic market is a fickle thing like that.

 

I think I have a question for you: Do you think there's really going to be a theatrical "Transformers Robots In Disguise 2015" movie that should be based on the cartoon that had been aired on Cartoon Network and developed by Hasbro Studios "Transformers Robots In Disguise 2015"?

 

Hopefully Hasbro failed the Takeover.

Lionsgate is better off.

 

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Coincidentally, given the Bumblebee casting news, Hasbro is a bit like WWE, because given the money they have and the nature of their product, there's a ceiling for the talent they can afford; for example, WWE can afford Cris Cyborg, Pitbull, and the Ball family. Set your sights a little lower.

 

Yes. I really don't see why they wouldn't, if they actually wanted to buy Hasbro. Transformers and G.I Joe, especially, should be under the Marvel Studios division, and yeah, I absolutely think they could handle it well.

That's fine. I really don't see the movie potential for those brands, frankly. I'd much rather get a good series of Transformers and G.I. Joe movies, first, and then maybe move on to the idea of a MASK movie, a decade or so later.

 

It's possible if the series warrants it with the success it's had. The budget would be easier for Hasbro to finance too. They should potentially consider this or something like this for the future as having a more kid friendly offering while letting the live movies handle the adult audiences could help create the same kind of tiered marketing they've enjoyed success of now with Rescue Bots and RID to then the Generations line and IDW comics that have higher age ranges in mind.

 

We already know where'd they go from there. Nowhere. Hasbro gave up.

Seeing as they've laid off just about all the artists working on that show I'm going to say no.

 

Then you didn't read what I wrote. Distance was needed for the time being. The kind of scandal Discovery was dealing with was a smudge on all that did business with them until the dust settled. Even now, it's a hesitant kind of area for those that handle properties for kids because of what that scandal entailed and how Discovery networks tried to hide it.

 

Wow.
They owe us a Transformers film art book before they leave.

 

I read what you wrote. I just didn't see how a scandal involving a show they had nothing to do related to the Hub. Especially when Hasbro Studios stopped producing content for the network in 2014.

 

You see this is where the movie market is failing in general. Profits are great here and now but no one talks about great movies from the past because they made lots of money or whether they didn't.

They talk about good movies because they're good movies. People will be talking about MCU in 20 years, u don't see anyone talking about ROTF, DOTM, AoE or TLK. Maybe TF07. People will probably talk about the recent Mad Max fondly and a bunch of other movies but TF will be forgotten unless they radically change their approach to making movies.

Profits are not a time resilient metric for success in movies. Ultimately movies are about creating content that people will want to watch forever in terms of pulling a copy from their collection and watching it again.

Whilst I'm sure some die hards will say the TF movies will meet that criteria for them, in general most know they will be forgotten over time.

 

I didn't say it was, but there are still scenes people talk of from the movies too. Varies film to film. What I was saying was that for hasbro, profits up is a resilient test for them. Paramount on the other hand is the one that needs what you're talking of.

Two different entities with how the rights are handled. And it'll vary based on future movies as well. TLK has those moments you speak of. Cogman and Hopkins both gave much of that, and even Izzie gave much for little kids that went to see it. The first movie still has some standout moments too, and the Forest battle scene for Prime still stands out very well for many. The Terminatrix still stands out too. DOTM has much with the Sentinel Prime and Optimus fights and build up, and then there is also the AOE Lockdown stuff that reverberated well with fans some.

These are popcorn flicks with additional layers for those that can analyze films. Rosebud type moments or "he was a ghost the entire time!" kind of moments are rare for cinema in general. Especially in today's rapid fire media world.

And while the MCU is great, it gets its fair share of negative flack too. Each brand varies per what it has. Both are bringing many new fans into the properties overall, and creating larger revenue draws by doing so. While making film is about making art, it is also a business with many facets and sides to how you qualify success and staying power.

Hasbro needs profits up to continue making and further broadening out the brand. Profits up for them means wider generations pursuit, wider forays in media, larger exposure in future endeavors. Higher finances for new projects and new series. The ability to bring new films and series forward. The toys selling means it does well at merchandising which means there is an audience there for it. Enough so that it's warranting a tribute line apparently.

Box office success isn't the only metric of how successful something is you are right on that. Continued after film enjoyment is shown though by how well the merchandise does, which is what Hasbro profits off of the most. What you're saying isn't true is already proven as true by the merchandise selling. Apparently much of the audience is looking back on it fondly if merchandise is moving. Box office success is great for Paramount, but longevity, which merchandise moving is proof of, is the success that Hasbro already has. Every movie we have the same "the sky is falling!" rhetoric, and every movie still does decently enough, and still has those neat watercooler moments people talk about and enjoyed. Every movie has moved merchandise. Enough that it still warrants future pursuits of projects.

So the sky isn't falling, quite the opposite, the stars are the limit and they'll keep on doing great things with the films with the best still yet to come.

It had to do with discovery networks in general which they were a share holder in Hub, though hasbro had the controlling stake in the channel at the time hence the name change.

There are other factors at work there too with the tier package the channel was on, lack of people recognizing what the channel was and supporting it, alongside the growth of digital markets. When dealing with starting a channel, there are a long list of factors you have to consider, how to turn profit, how to rest on reruns to generate revenue to broaden the channel. The game show material yielded some decent results and helped turned a profit at a quicker pace with lower investment. How cheaper outlets may become available later thanks to wider channel bands now that have given rise to much wider channels available. Them lowering their involvement in what was Discovery kids, then Hub, then Discovery Family is not a sign of giving up on this pursuit of an entertainment company and owning a channel to air their content, it's reassessing options that may not have the same baggage. How vocally angry many fans were about this pursuit was also a factor as they began wishing failure on Hasbro for it. Which still makes no sense why alleged fans would do that.

So hasbro lowering their involvement for now to reconsider their options at a later date is smart business. Does not mean they 'gave up.' It means they stuck a pin in it for later when they have better & wider options to get a wider audience reach.

The other issue with the scandal is how long other places may have known ahead of time. Oprah knew about it well before it went public. How soon other outlets found out and did their own damage control to remove themselves from it and when, is anyone's guess. 2014 is when that scandal broke publicly and it also became known that Discovery Networks knew long before then but tried to bury it for as long as they could.

What we hear publicly and when we hear it, and what companies know internally are two very different things. This is why fans playing armchair analyzers is extremely flawed. We do not have access to the same data and in-knowledge they do. Especially potential damage control moves when fears that anything another entity has could become toxic for a period of time. Hasbro especially with dealing with kid franchises may have become even more uncomfortable about it as it could reflect poorly on them when they didn't know when first getting involved in this pursuit with what has always been a business friend they have done work with in the past and not aware of those things until they fully entered the media world and had that insider knowledge.

When a scandal first breaks, it's a backlash against anything that generates revenue for that outlet. Hub would have been stuck in the crossfire of that as the revenue they generate did go to discovery networks too.

 

Are you really comparing the amount of flack the MCU gets to transformers? Lol.

Sure, the MCU isn't perfect, but the transformers aren't even in the same ballpark... or the same league.. in fact, I think they're playing a different sport entirely.

The average movie goer won't be talking about these movies.. History won't look kindly on them. Perhaps they earn a cult following for being so bad, maybe they're destined to flood the syfy channel in 20 years. But there isn't anything special about them. You had the awe from the first transformation sequence, but the 4 movies following that has put a sour taste in people's mouths.

I can't even bring up one really memorable scene from the last knight.

Simple "popcorn" blockbusters are dying. People aren't going to the movies simply for spectacle anymore. They want some substance. After 10 years and all of the great genre movies that have come out and have been positively reviewed since '07 and they STILL have learned nothing.

I think you're mistaking cool scenes with fun ones. The fact is, the transformers aren't in their movies long enough for most people to actually care about them. And very few people are going to remember a major human moment in a TRANSFORMERS movie.

We, as a fan base, need to stop making excuses and apologies for a company who seems absolutely clueless. Clueless to what their fans want to see, clueless to what their fans expectations are, clueless to the direction the industry is going, and clueless to what the average movie goer wants to see.

We deserve something better, we deserve our own MCU.. Respectable movies that (as I've said a thousand times) aren't the low bar by which genre movies are judged by.

I'm sick of hearing "at least it's not as bad as transformers."

 

I saw take the quality of the models down that way it doesn't take so much to animate them or better yet stop paying human stars.

 

The amount of actors with name value that bloat these movies amazes me. I think they could of gotten away with smaller human casts and some cheaper actors. I love seeing good actors but a bunch of parts weren't big or complex enough to warrant the bigger names. Maybe I'm wrong and it the bigger names didn't add much cost.

 

That's a shame. It would have been beneficial to Hasbro in the long run. Still, they have a lot of good IPs and multimedia to work with as-is, and they're still profitable so I'm sure they'll keep pushing ahead.

Honestly, for as much as the fans (myself included) complain about Hasbro, that company continues to impress me. Heck, if I were going to appoint a CEO of such a company, Goldner would absolutely be my pick - I don't know a ton about the guy, honestly (I should look into him more at some point), but he's definitely done wonders for Hasbro. The toy market is shrinking and yet they're continuing to be profitable. In all fairness, Mattel is doing the same, but I personally don't think most of Mattel's IP range is going to be as long-lasting as Hasbro's. I guess we'll see in time though.


In regards to what people are saying about their TV channel...

They entered into a dying market in a joint partnership with Discovery and had very little in the way of new shows to support their network, not to mention that the channel was a premium package channel.
So was Hasbro to blame? Partially, but there are far more factors to it than that.
As far as the live action movies go, we've had Paramount with their fingers in the pie since day one, Dreamworks was involved early on, and there are plenty of others with a stake here other than just Hasbro.

Do I think Hasbro needs to improve? Yes, absolutely, but to say they couldn't handle their own film studio...
Hasbro Studios is doing pretty well. Their only mistake was putting RID on Cartoon Network instead of something like Netflix.
A Lionsgate acquisition would have been only been a positive.

I just wanted to add that, after reading what you had to say (and doing a far better job of explaining it than I did), I'm really glad someone "gets it" - that someone really understands what they're talking about. No offence to anyone but a lot of this thread is just "look at this anecdotal thing that wasn't great and we didn't like; HASBLOW IS DOOMED", when that's not the reality at all.

 

Personally would not have a problem with current Disney if they do buy Hasbro and let them do their thing like marvel. Look at guardians for example. we just got 2 blockbusters about a raccoon and a tree that says 3 words and the guardians brand has a less than stellar comic/media history.

 

See, I would hope, if . . . and let's be honest here, it's a giant whopping sledgehammer full of wishful thinking level if. . . Disney bought Hasbro, or the division of Hasbro in charge of media creation, they'd let the cartoon division carry on and put a full stop on the current film division, let people catch their breath while the re-develop from the ground up, then put the new concept in motion.

In a perfect world they'd put the Hasbro properties in the hands of Marvel studios. There's zero reason G.I. Joe couldn't start showing up as military in various Marvel movies, then slowly develop into a property that could stand on its own. Transformers would be trickier with how large the Marvelverse has become, and maybe they'd have to keep them separate from the current Cinematic universe, but with the storytelling power they have, we could at least see a really decent, if not downright good Transformers film franchise develop.

There *IS* still money to be made from the Transformers as a film property, but it's not going to continue to happen if they just keep churning out more of the same. TLK is proof of that. What we really need is a massive gutting of the process that lead to TLK. Simplify the story a bit, concentrate on developing characters. Human and Transformer alike need more personality, more believable interaction, and understandable motivations that drive the plot. You can't develop a story by throwing concepts into a blender then dumping them on a table and arranging them in random order then throwing "cool" characters into the scenarios. And that seems to be what happened with TLK.

I do think it's more than a pipe dream to think Disney would snap up Hasbro right at the moment unless Hasbro themselves went shopping for a buyer. And I have SERIOUS doubts that's happening.

I'd be far more interested in seeing Hasbro acquire or start working with a smaller/indie studio that's hungry and filled with talent. That's potentially more likely, AND could lead to some really great visual story-telling that's not just regurgitating ideas from other popular media and hoping that it'll work.