It's one of my favorite memories growing up as a kid in the 80s. My brothers and I literally wore out the VHS tape of The Transformers: The Movie, re-watching it over and over.
It opened in theaters in August 1986 and it was gone fast. For a lot of us it was always the tape, the tracking lines, and a TV.
This week it's back on the big screen, in a new 4K restoration.
Check out the original 1986 teaser trailer below!
The re-release is Fathom Entertainment working with Hasbro, and it opened on Thursday, September 17th, which Hasbro marks as Transformers Day. It went out to 1,454 theaters across North America, with 4DX in some markets.
The movie itself runs 85 minutes, plus the new short after the credits, and it's still rated PG, Spike's one bad word and all.
So how long do you have? Fathom lists the run through Tuesday the 22nd, but plenty of theaters are still showing dates into Wednesday, so check showtimes near you. Tickets are on Fandango as well.
Stay in your seat when the credits roll! Attached to the screenings is Optimus Prime: Awakening, an all-new 12-minute CG short that premiered with this event. It's Peter Cullen's final performance as Optimus Prime, and Frank Welker is back as both Megatron and Soundwave. Fathom describes it as a love letter to the Transformers community and to Cullen.
Cullen died on August 26th, at 85, a few weeks before the run opened.
It has even more meaning for me now that I'm older, had the opportunity to visit with and interview Peter Cullen back in 2014, and now his passing. His lines from the film carry even more weight now, and they hit especially hard to this kid who's now in his 50s and in many ways has refused to grow up. Check out that interview below!
Three of his lines in particular hit hardest, from three different scenes. Squaring off with Megatron at Autobot City, before the wounds that kill him: "One shall stand, one shall fall."
Dying, with the Autobots gathered around him and Daniel begging him not to go: "Do not grieve. Soon I shall be one with the Matrix."
And then Ultra Magnus, played by Robert Stack, tells him he's just a soldier, that he isn't worthy. Prime answers him with two words and then a promise. "Nor was I. But one day, an Autobot shall rise from our ranks, and use the power of the Matrix to light our darkest hour."
The opening weekend of the re-release brought in an estimated $3.1 million Friday to Sunday, good for 8th place. For a 40-year-old cartoon, on a chart with Resident Evil and Spider-Man: Brand New Day, that's a real number. Add Thursday and the first four days come to an estimated $4.2 million, which in unadjusted dollars is about 71% of the $5,849,647 the movie made in its entire 1986 run.
That percentage is our own math based upon those two figures, and they're UNADJUSTED. A 1986 dollar was a much bigger dollar, so this run has NOT out-earned the original in 2026 dollars!
If the theater run misses you, the soundtrack is a big part of why this movie stuck. Vince DiCola's score and Stan Bush's "The Touch" are on CD, and there's a marbled "Unicron" vinyl pressing limited to 4,000 copies that has been in and out of stock, so check before you get attached to it.
On disc, Shout! has a 40th Anniversary limited edition steelbook up for pre-order with Dolby Atmos and Dolby Vision, and it releases November 17th. Whether the new short ends up on that disc hasn't been confirmed, and I'm not going to pretend otherwise. Chris Prince's The Transformers: The Movie: The Ultimate Visual History, a hardcover, is up for pre-order too and lands November 24th.
Don't want to wait until November? The 35th Anniversary Blu-ray is in print.
Which tape did you wear out as a kid? Are you making it out to a theater this week to catch it before it's gone?
Let us know in the comments below!
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