Box Office Bomb: The Last Knight was produced on a budget ranging from $217 to $260 million and not only received some of the worst critical reception of the series to date, but it also received staggeringly worse financial returns. The domestic gross totaled about only $130 million. It ended with a worldwide gross of about $600 million, $100 million less than the total of the first film, a movie released ten years prior and without 3D or nowadays' ticket prices; not to mention almost half of the gross of the last two films each (and it underperformed in the country that usually loves the franchise, China, grossing about $100 million less there than Age of Extinction). While $600 million is a healthy gross for most films, it’s an embarrassment for a film series coming off of two consecutive billion-dollar movies that managed to make big bucks despite poor critical reception. Matter of fact, this was a very unhealthy gross for the film due to its colossal budget and analysts estimated Paramount lost a shocking total of $100 million due to the underperformance of The Last Knight. As a result, Paramount pulled all direct sequels to The Last Knight and after it was successful, Bumblebee, which was supposed to be a prequel film, was turned into a reboot film by Hasbro.
The Danza: Isabela Merced's character is named Izabella, while Glenn Morshower returns as General Morshower, who was named after him.
Descended Creator: Erik Aadahl is the sound designer as well as Bumblebee's voice actor.
Fake Brit: British character Merlin is played by American actor Stanley Tucci.
Fandom Nod: Hot Rod's French accent raised more than a few eyebrows. In the film itself, he mentions hating the accent, but is unable to get rid of it.
The Foreign Subtitle: The Japanese one roughly means "King of the Last Knights"note Saikou no Kishi-Oh instead.
Franchise Killer: Due to the financial disappointment and even worse critical reception of The Last Knight, a direct sequel was scrapped and Paramount announced the next live-action Transformers film will be released in 2022 but that it will not be a continuation of The Last Knight. Even so, due to the box office failure of TLK that resulted in the loss of $100 million, Hasbro couldn't afford to renew their license with Activision and such all Transformers video games produced by Activision were pulled from digital stores in December 2017.
To add on, both Steve Buscemi and John Goodman’s characters interact with each other. Both actors were main characters in Monsters, Inc..
Keep Circulating the Tapes: Transformers: The Last Knight suffers a bit of the Star Wars flu in which scenes you saw in theaters are missing from home video releases and are currently inaccessible.
Bumblebee swatting a bug-bot that pops out of Daytrader.
Wheelie checking out used cars on a laptop while flirting.
Nitro Zeus says "Say hello to your wife for me!" instead of "Jet's sleeping with your wife".
Money, Dear Boy: Part of the reason Anthony Hopkins signed on. That being said, he's spoken fondly about his experiences on set and enjoyed making the film.
In the Mexican dub, Blas García and Gerardo Vásquez retake their roles as Optimus and Megatron, after being replaced in Age of Extinction.
Having voiced Megatron in the Japanese dubs of the first three movies, Kotaro Nakamura reprises the role after it was recast with Ryūzaburō Ōtomo for Age of Extinction.
A Meta Example of this is Frank Welker getting to voice Megatron proper after being sidelined in favor of Hugo Weaving.
The Hungarian dub likewise opted to reassign Megatron's voice actor from the first three films to the role.
Bumblebee is voiced by sound editor Erik Aadahl this time around as opposed to Mark Ryan, who did the voice in the first movie.
In the Brazilian Portuguese dub, Barricade is voiced by Mauro Horta, because the character's former voice actor Júlio César Barreiros died before The Last Knight was made.
The Hungarian dub had to change Crosshairs' voice from Péter Haás Vander to Zoltán Schneider, due to Haás' passing in 2015.
One of Hot Rod's lines in the scene where he drops Viviane off at Burton's castle ("She's very difficult!") is done by someone who is audibly not Omar Sy.
Barricade's last few lines in the film are also quite clearly done by Frank Welker. This is a repeat of what happened in Dark of the Moon when Barricade's lines in the "No prisoners, only trophies" scene were also delivered by Welker, who apparently did the temp voice for Barricade in both films.
Nitro Zeus is voiced by John DiMaggio in the main version of the movie and for the home video release, but by Steven Barr in the alternate version subtitled in non-English-speaking countries. The digital release, while mostly featuring John's performance, has a few lines from Barr's take of the character in a couple scenes.
Show Accuracy/Toy Accuracy: A particularly glaring one in the case of Barricade. Hasbro milked his Ensemble Dark Horse appeal a little by making the Deluxe figure with brass knuckles that had "Protect" and "Serve" engraved in reverse, meaning that he could leave those words on his victims like a brand. Then the movie comes out, and the brass knuckles not only say "Punish" and "Enslave" instead, but they're engraved normally.
Throw It In!: Screenwriter Matt Halloway is a huge Downton Abbey fan and joked that they should get Jim Carter (who plays Carson the Butler) to voice Edmund Burton's robot servant Cogman. Michael Bay decided to cast Carter after hearing this.
Uncredited Role: The voice actors for Canopy, Onslaught, Berserker, and the Guardian Knights are unlisted from the final product. As are the substitute voices for Hot Rod and Barricade. While several of them have been attributed to other members of the cast, specifically to Steven Barr (Stormreign, Berserker), Frank Welker (Cannopy, Skullitron) and John DiMaggio (Onslaught, the Talisman Knight), no sources have confirmed whether or not to be the case. The other two appear to just be scratch track vocals done by an unknown member of the production staff that simply weren't rerecorded for the film proper.
Voice-Only Cameo: Nicola Peltz reprises her role as Tessa Yeager through a voice-only message.
In an interview with Empire Magazine, originally the idea of a Transformers film dealing with King Arthur and World War II were originally pitched as ideas for 2 separate movies, before it was decided to merge the 2 plotlines into one single film.
Tyrese Gibson was set to reprise his role of Robert Epps from the first three films, but his schedule prevented him from participating in the London-centric shoots. Strangely, despite Epps not appearing in the film, his absence was not confirmed until literally the day before the American release of the film.
The film was reportedly originally going to delve into the backstory of Optimus and Megatron, and there are hints of this in the final cut (in particular Megatron's "We were brothers once" line), but anything explicitly relating to this was apparently cut.
Supposedly, the writers were going to use the Quintessan race, as the previous film showed an organic hand and the creators are referred in plural. Hasbro pushed the idea of the "Original Prime" look, which creates some plotholes with both AoE and ROTF.
The toyline's renditions of Nitro Zeus and Cogman suggest that Cogman was originally going to have a larger combative role in the finale by connecting to Nitro's body after the Decepticon has his head blown off.
The artwork of Berserker decipts him with an Autobot symbol, covered by a large red cross that covers most of his torso. The latter made it into his final design, the symbol didn't.
Early on in the film's development, the Dinobots were said to be getting more screentime. In the final film, only Grimlock and Slug appear, and only near the start at that, suggesting a change of plans.
There exists concept art of Megatron with a new alt-mode of a dragon, which ironically made him look quite similar to his Beast Wars incarnation (specifically, season 3's "Transmetal 2" design).
According to T.J. Miller, Steven Spielberg approached him about appearing in this film. Miller wasn't interested because he found Michael Bay overbearing to work for, and was confused as to how considering his character was Killed Off for Real. Spielberg apparently shrugged and said, "I dunno, maybe you come back as a Transformer."
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