>>6462373>Viacom executives will be in the hot seat next week after jetting to China to help assuage the fears of a major film financing partner, Variety has learned.>Executives from Viacom will travel to China next week to meet with their counterparts at Huahua and to try to reassure them that things will improve in coming months, a source close to Huahua tells Variety. The Chinese company is particularly disappointed with the reception of “Baywatch,” “Ghost in the Shell,” and “Transformers: The Last Knight,” and believes that Paramount’s creative team has not done a good job of making films that will play to international audiences.>The company was particularly incensed that the most recent “Transformers” did not perform better in China. The film made nearly $230 million in the Middle Kingdom, but that was a significant drop-off from the $320 million earned by its predecessor, “Transformers: Age of Extinction,” in 2014. Globally, the film earned $570.6 million — a weak result given its $217 million budget.>“Viacom needs to explain a better plan for how it spends [our] investment money,” the Huahua source said.Production budget is just how much the movie costs. There's usually twice as much money in the movie as the budget they give. Tran5formers flopped and two companies may sink with it.
