Michael Bay’s career has been littered with box office hits. Even outside of the first four Transformers movies, Bad Boys II was a massive hit in the early 2000s, while this filmmaker made a trio of box office hits for Disney’s various adult-skewing movie divisions, starting with The Rock. That trio included Armageddon, which, before 2010, was one of the biggest live-action movies ever released by the Mouse House. Even Bay’s hard-R low-budget crime drama Pain & Gain almost doubled its $26-million budget in North America.
However, one particular title in his filmography stands out years later as one of his biggest box office flops. 20 years ago, The Island, though held in high esteem in some corners eons later, was a financial disaster, albeit one that still opened up new doors for Bay as a filmmaker.
What Went Wrong With The Island?
For some, The Island stands out as a welcome departure from typical Michael Bay films with its twisty-turny sci-fi plot and more grounded, serious tone. Even at the time of its release, reviews were slightly better than other Bay blockbusters like Pearl Harbor and Armageddon. However, that wasn’t enough to keep the feature away from box office disaster. This DreamWorks SKG/Warner Bros. Pictures release only grossed $35.81 million domestically despite a plum mid-July 2005 release date. Coming mere weeks off The Island, leading man Ewan McGregor’s record-shattering box office smash Revenge of the Sith did nothing to give this $126-million-budgeted title a break.
Minor salvation was found overseas, where it grossed roughly $127 million, but that wasn’t enough to offset the film’s costs or erase those dismal North America box office numbers. The 2010 book The Men Who Would Be King features anecdotes and allegations that DreamWorks (or at least the studio’s marketing head, Terry Press) considered The Island a lost cause for ages. While other Bay films could be promoted with trailers showing off ships or Paris, France exploding, The Island’s marketing had to conceal its various twists and turns.
That put the US marketing department into a sticky situation, though its North American release date also didn’t help matters. The Island opened hot off the heels of War of the Worlds (another DreamWorks SKG co-production) and only seven days after the original Fantastic Four movie. With so many big blockbusters in the marketplace, an original film with no pre-existing source material, The Island was always going to face an uphill battle for audience expectations. Still, nobody could’ve imagined that the film would become easily the biggest flop in Bay’s entire career.
The Island Led Michael Bay to Other Lucrative Projects
In the wake of The Island flopping, there were inevitable consequences. Five months after Island‘s debut, Paramount Pictures bought DreamWorks SKG for $1.6 billion. Though not because of The Island’s box office failure, this summer blockbuster going under to such an extreme degree couldn’t have helped DreamWorks stay afloat as an independent entity. One unexpected byproduct of The Island, though, was how it opened up new doors for Bay as an artist.
Prior to The Island, Bay had almost exclusively worked at Disney (save for returning to Sony to helm 2003’s Bad Boys II). His inaugural DreamWorks SKG feature was a bust, but it still put Bay on the radar of the studio executives, including DreamWorks co-founder Steven Spielberg. DreamWorks opted to rehire Bay for its next big blockbuster play, a 2007 film adaptation of the Transformers toys from the ’80s. While The Island was a box office failure, Transformers became a license to print money for DreamWorks and Paramount.
Without The Island, Bay would’ve never ventured outside of his Disney domicile and head down a path that would see him helming some of the biggest blockbusters of all-time. Plus, decades later, online defenders of The Island have looked at the feature as prime proof that Bay has more versatility as a filmmaker than his detractors admit. Back in July 2005, it would’ve been impossible to see any upsides to how the public received The Island. 20 years later, though, both the film’s cult following and the way it led Bay to Transformers have made it a pivotal feature in his filmography.
The Island is available for digital rental and purchase from Amazon Prime Video
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