Paramount Animation and Hasbro Entertainment’s Transformers One, the first animated Transformers movie in close to 40 years, looks to liven up the mid-September box office with a domestic start in the low-$30Ms with potential for upside.

Transformers One will keep the domestic box office at its excellent clip. Through the last weekend of April, the domestic B.O. stood at $2.07 billion, 20% behind 2023. Since then, through last weekend, the domestic box office has made an additional $4 billion for a running Ytd cume of $6.08 billion, now 12% behind last year.

Advance ticket sales are solid from Thursday through Saturday, ahead of last year’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem ($28M 3-day) and Trolls Band Together ($30M).

Josh Cooley directed what has been described for months as one of Paramount’s highest-testing animated movies. The $75M production tells the origin story of Optimus Prime and Megatron, who were buddies before becoming sworn enemies.