China Won't Save the Blockbuster

It certainly looked like a bomb. "Transformers: The Last Knight," which cost Paramount Pictures Corp. over $350 million to make and market, earned a lame $69 million during its first five days in U.S. theaters in mid-June. Paramount executives could overlook that performance because in China, where the "Transformers" series has enjoyed a decade of wild popularity, the film earned over $123 million during the same period. But the time when Hollywood filmmakers could count on Chinese viewers to rescue them from disaster may be rapidly coming to an end.

The world's second-biggest movie market (and soon to be its biggest), China has bailed out Hollywood's box-office bombs for years. The list of examples is long, led by the first four "Transformers" films, all of which have been massive hits in China despite generally poor reviews elsewhere.