What does a fan take a photograph of, on the way out of a film they have already seen at home?

Not the screen, as it turns out, and not really the film. A 4K restoration ought to send people reaching for a phone inside the auditorium, yet almost everything posted since Wednesday was shot in a lobby or a car park: a popcorn tin standing on a glass counter, a free comic handed over with the ticket, two boys settling into a row while their father works out where to put the camera. But the shot that keeps recurring is the one filmed after the lights come up: somebody parked outside, phone propped against the wheel, trying to find words for the short that plays once the credits have finished.

“For six days only, September 17 to 22,” the release page says, while Hasbro’s own Apology Tour hub says the 21st. But neither of them is what the box office is actually doing. Pull showtimes for New York or Los Angeles today and AMC is still listing the film on the 23rd, and on the 24th at a handful of houses: Kips Bay 15 and the Empire 25 in Manhattan, Northridge 10 in the valley [1]. Cinemark runs to the 23rd in Los Angeles. Regal appears to have stopped on the 21st, and the 4DX seats at Union Square went with it. On the 25th the listings go empty everywhere, but it is two more days than anybody advertised.

The reviews have settled into the split this film has always produced. Audiences on Fandango have it at 88 percent. The critics sit at 62. A 1986 toy commercial with a Vince DiCola score and a body count has always scored about there.

It is also doing real business for a forty year old cartoon. Box Office Report put Friday at $845,000 from 1,454 locations and the running domestic total at $1.897 million [4]. There are no stars to send out on a press tour for a cartoon whose lead died last month, so Fathom bought that audience with the restoration and the short and nothing else.

What people are saying on the way out

Six posts from the opening days, quoted from their authors’ own accounts and linked back to them.

Man, my son and I go every 5 years to the Transformers the movie. But this 40th anniversary hit different with the loss of Peter Cullen. AWG | MsWeakz, September 18

It’s a day later, 2026-09-18, but I still managed to buy a 40th Anniversary The Transformers: The Movie Blanket at my local AMC. My local Regal Cinemas did not have any Transformers merch. DarkTiga69, September 18

Bringing my Prime popcorn bucket with me to watch the Transformers 40th Anniversary screening Legion, September 20

Just back from seeing @transformers the movie in 4DX…brilliant just brilliant happy 40th to a legendary movie and RIP to an event more legendary voice Stuart Cullen, September 17

Here We Go! 40th Anniversary. Hope I don’t cry when Prime dies. VON, September 18

The 40th anniversary screening of Transformers the Movie was a great experience and I loved the tribute video to Peter Cullen before the film. PCP, September 20

The premiere, in pictures

Three sets of photographs, from three different rooms. Hasbro and Fathom ran an early world premiere before any of this reached a public screening, and TFW2005 came back from it with the only proper set anybody has published. Two attendees shot the rest at their own screenings on the 17th, one in Los Angeles and one in Australia. Every photograph below belongs to the person credited under it, and any of them come down on request [5].

Lobby backdrop for The Transformers The Movie 40th anniversary, a painted Optimus Prime reaching out of a Cybertronian street scene, with boxed figures displayed on white plinths in front of it

The backdrop and the figure plinths, set up in the lobby before the doors opened. Photo: TFW2005.

A fan wearing an Optimus Prime helmet with a silver faceplate and a Reformatted Edition soundtrack t-shirt, holding a lit Matrix of Leadership replica above his head in front of the 40th anniversary backdrop

Matrix held overhead in front of the backdrop, in an Optimus helmet and a Reformatted Edition soundtrack shirt. The IMAX sign is on the wall behind him. Photo: Jason Reyes, @reyespwrranger, September 17.

Three guests staging a tug of war over a lit Matrix of Leadership replica in front of a large Optimus Prime and Megatron standee, one pulling hard with his mouth open, one kneeling and grabbing the middle, one standing back with his hands up

The Matrix changes hands, roughly, in front of the same standee at the Australian fan event. Photo: Despina Notaras, @diaryofdespina, September 17.

A guest standing in front of the large Optimus Prime and Megatron artwork standee for The Transformers The Movie

The Optimus and Megatron standee. This is the one people queued to stand in front of. Photo: Despina Notaras, @diaryofdespina, September 17.

An auditorium seen from the back rows, the Optimus Prime Awakening title card on the screen with Optimus Prime beside the lettering, and audience members holding phones up to film it

The Awakening title card, and most of the back rows filming it. Photo: TFW2005.

A cinema screen showing an Optimus Prime figure against a glowing orange background with The Transformers The Movie logo and the handles at transformersofficial, at collider and the hashtag OptimusPrimeAwakening

On screen after the short, with the official handles and the Awakening hashtag. Photo: TFW2005.

A hand holding an Optimus Prime action figure up in the air so that it lines up with a much larger Optimus Prime standee behind it

A Prime held up against a much larger Prime. Every one of these events produces this photograph. Photo: TFW2005.

Boxed Transformers figures on display at the premiere, Wheeljack and Windcharger visible on the lower row in Transformers branded packaging

The display cases, with Wheeljack and Windcharger on the bottom row. Photo: TFW2005.

The Optimus Prime Awakening poster lit in a cinema lightbox, Optimus Prime standing against a yellow background above the billing block

The Awakening poster in the lightbox. Photo: TFW2005.

The Optimus Prime Awakening poster on a curtain, reading ONLY IN THEATERS AFTER THE TRANSFORMERS THE MOVIE above the title and the billing block

ONLY IN THEATERS AFTER THE TRANSFORMERS: THE MOVIE. Photo: TFW2005.

The wall

Nine of them, official and fan-shot, in the order they went up. Every one of them is embedded from the creator’s own channel. We have rehosted nothing [2].

The Apology Tour trailer. Fathom Entertainment, July 24.

The only footage Hasbro has released from the short, thirty-five seconds of it. Views passed 2.6 million while the film was in cinemas.

Collider's lobby vox pops from the Landmark Sunset screening in Los Angeles, September 16.

Hasbro's own cut of the same night. "It was like time travelling."

deceptisean77, opening day. The short gets its own chapter marker at 6:42.

Geek Strong walking AMC and Regal concession counters on the 17th. Nobody else has posted a proper look at the collectibles in the wild.

Bots and Books with the Target Optimus bucket out of the box. Target's own page has no add to cart on it today, only a notify button.

Loomar, watching the 1986 film for the first time at 40 and then walking straight into the short.

Peach State Prime took his sons to the Movie Tavern in Roswell, Georgia, and came home with the free Energon Universe comics they were handing out.

Nobody is filming the film

The 1986 picture is not what the cameras are pointed at, because everybody in the auditorium has seen it already; nobody is holding a phone up at Unicron eating a moon. What people are recording is the short at the end, and each other.

An anniversary re-release normally has nothing new in it, because the ticket buys something that has already happened and cannot surprise anybody who was there the first time. This one hides new footage behind the credits, recorded by Peter Cullen, and it will be the last of his work that anyone hears for the first time. Peter Cullen died at home in Los Angeles on Wednesday, August 26, at 85. Three weeks later his final Optimus Prime went into cinemas.

Poster for Optimus Prime: Awakening, the twelve minute animated short playing after the credits of the 40th anniversary screenings

Twelve minutes, and it plays after the credits. Poster, Hasbro.

Fathom and Hasbro have handled this better than they had to. The short was recorded and finished long before August, so the safe commercial move was to say nothing and let the credits roll. Instead the description on the official clip turns, halfway through, from runtime and cast to this: “In light of Peter’s passing, we are especially honored to share this performance with the Transformers community and celebrate the extraordinary legacy he leaves behind.” A tribute to Cullen is also playing before the feature rather than after it, in more than one market. In Singapore, Geek Culture and Shaw Theaters put on a one night event at Shaw Lido on the 17th for more than three hundred people, with cosplayers, local artists and a prize dip, and TFW2005’s report from the floor describes a Cullen tribute clip running ahead of the film [3]. Patrick Gordon, posting from a screening on the 20th, describes the same thing and is cool on the short itself: “The 40th anniversary screening of Transformers the Movie was a great experience and I loved the tribute video to Peter Cullen before the film.” Neither Hasbro nor Fathom has announced the tribute. It appears nowhere in the marketing for this run.

Where it is still playing

Our tickets page carries the booking links and the per country notes. Read the caveat at the top of it, because Fathom’s release page, Hasbro’s hub and the chains have never agreed on when this stops. The practical answer this morning is that AMC is the best bet after Monday, Cinemark runs to the 23rd in Los Angeles, and Regal has closed its window. A local house still listing the 23rd or the 24th has not made a mistake in the listing.

The rest of the run is on the tickets page, and everything the 4K restoration is doing is in our piece on the steelbook. The disc lands on November 17 and it is the version most people will end up owning.

Anybody wanting something from the fortieth on a shelf rather than a ticket stub will find the pickings thinner than the marketing suggests, because almost the entire range is still on pre-order. Two things are actually orderable today: Hasbro and Takara Tomy’s Studio Series Matrix of Leadership at BigBadToyStore for $124.99, and the BBTS exclusive Hot Rod red vinyl pressing of the Reformatted Edition soundtrack at $35.99. The Matrix is the object the medical bay scene is built around.

Send us yours

There is more of this out there than we have caught, because a hashtag search only surfaces the people who used the hashtag, and most of the good queue and marquee shots are sitting in somebody’s camera roll. Anyone who shot something in a lobby or a queue this week, we would like to run it here under your own name. Reply on the forum or mail [email protected], and say where and when you shot it.

Sources

[1] Showtimes were pulled through Fandango rather than the chains’ own sites, because AMC, Cinemark and Regal all serve their showtime browsers behind scripts or bot checks that do not answer to us. Fandango accepts September 25 and 26 as dates and returns no theatres at all for either, so the empty end of the run is a real negative and not a calendar that stops early. Fathom’s own date picker offers every day out to October 8. The picker is a widget and not a schedule.

[2] We have not rehosted a single frame of anybody’s fan footage. If you would rather your video was not on this page, tell us and it comes off the same day.

[3] The tribute clip is described in TFW2005’s report from the event. We have not seen it and Hasbro has not put it online.

[4] Box Office Report’s figure, posted on September 19, is quoted as published. It calls $1.897 million a two day total against a run that opened on the 17th, so either the Wednesday previews sit outside its count or the wide break was the 18th. We have not been able to settle which, and Box Office Mojo still carries no entry for this re-issue at all.

[5] The seven premiere photographs are TFW2005’s, from the September 9 report by Black Convoy. The other three are their posters’ own: Jason Reyes shot his at the Collider and Hasbro screening in Los Angeles, and Despina Notaras shot hers at an invited fan event in Australia, both on September 17. All ten are reproduced with credit and a link back, and any of them come down the same day on request.