‘Furiosa,’ ‘Garfield’ lead slowest Memorial Day box office in decades

Movie theaters are looking more and more like a wasteland this summer. Neither “ Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga ” nor “ The Garfield Movie ” could save Memorial Day weekend, which is cruising towards a two-decade low.

“ Furiosa,” the Mad Max prequel starring Anya Taylor-Joy and Chris Hemsworth, claimed the first place spot for the Friday-Saturday-Sunday weekend with $25.6 million, according to studio estimates on Sunday. Warner Bros. is waiting until Monday to release its four-day estimates.

“The Garfield Movie,” animated and family-friendly, was the other big new offering this weekend from Sony’s Columbia Pictures and Alcon Entertainment. It is claiming No. 1 for the four-day holiday weekend with an estimated $31.9 million in ticket sales through Memorial Day. Sony estimates its three-day earnings to be $24.8 million.

Aside from Memorial Day in 2020 when theaters were closed due to COVID-19, these are the lowest earning No. 1 movies in 29 years, since “Casper” earned $22.5 million (not adjusted for inflation) in its first four days in 1995. Big earners are more typical for the holiday weekend, which has had ten movies crack $100 million, led by “Top Gun: Maverick’s” record-setting $160 million launch in 2022. Last year, the live-action “The Little Mermaid” joined the group with a $118 million debut. Audiences even turned out in greater numbers over the pandemic-addled weekend in 2021 for “A Quiet Place Part II,” which made over $57 million.

“This was a rather slow Memorial weekend,” said Paul Dergarabedian, the senior media analyst for Comscore. “A few things didn’t happen that created this situation: We didn’t have a tailwind heading into the summer. We kicked off the summer minus a Marvel movie. In a way, we’ve been playing catch up all year long.”

“Furiosa” was never expected to join the $100 million opener club, which Warner Bros. released on 3,804 screens in the U.S. and Canada. But it was supposed to have a slightly stronger showing in the $40 million range over its first four days. That would have been more in line with its predecessor, “Mad Max: Fury Road,” which opened to $45.4 million in May 2015. “Fury Road,” starring Charlize Theron and Tom Hardy, went on to gross nearly $380 million worldwide.

This new origin story in which Taylor-Joy plays a younger version of Theron’s character had a lot of things going for it, too, including strong reviews out of the just-wrapped Cannes Film Festival (it has an 89% on Rotten Tomatoes) and a splashy international press tour with many buzzy premiere looks from Taylor-Joy. Internationally, it made $33.3 million adding up to a $58.9 million global launch. With a reported $168 million production budget, not accounting for marketing and promotion, “Furiosa” has a long road to profitability.

“The Garfield Movie,” meanwhile, was more modestly budgeted, at a reported $60 million and is being looked at as a solid launch for the franchise. It previously opened internationally and has earned over $66 million to date. Its domestic launch far surpassed the first weekends of previous attempts at Garfield movies.

Chris Pratt voices the lasagna-loving, Monday-hating orange cat in the movie that got scathing reviews from critics (it has a 37% on Rotten Tomatoes). Audiences meanwhile gave both “Furiosa” and “The Garfield Movie” a B+ CinemaScore and 4.5 stars out of 5 on PostTrak.

In its second weekend, John Krasinski’s “IF” fell 53%, adding $16.1 million through Sunday and $20.7 million through Monday, bringing its domestic total to $63.3 million. Worldwide, it has surpassed $100 million. “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes,” now in its third weekend, added $13.4 million through Sunday, bringing its global total to $294.8 million, making it the fourth-highest grossing film of the year.

This all adds up to a summer moviegoing season that will not only fall short of a normal $4 billion stretch but may even struggle to reach $3 billion. Earlier this week, the industry trade The Hollywood Reporter asked “ what happened to the $100 million opener? ” Notably, 2024 has had none yet. The biggest of the year was “Dune: Part Two,” which opened to $82.5 million and went on to earn over $711 million worldwide.

“Moviegoing begets moviegoing,” Derarabedian said. “Every studio is rooting for every other studio to have a big hit.”

The lack of a recent runaway hit just puts more pressure on the upcoming films to make up the slack. Still on the way are a slew of potential blockbusters like Paramount’s “A Quiet Place: Day One” (June 27), Universal’s “Despicable Me 4” (July 3) and “ Twisters ” (July 19) and two heavy-hitters from Disney: “Inside Out 2” (June 14) and “ Deadpool & Wolverine ” (July 26).

“It ain’t over yet,” Dergarabedian said. “There’s a lot of big movies on the way. The summer heat is on for the June and July films to really deliver.”

Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore. Final domestic figures will be released Monday.

1. “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga,” $25.6 million.

2. “The Garfield Movie,” $24.8 million.

3. “IF,” $16.1 million.

4. “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes,” $13.4 million.

5. “The Fall Guy,” $5.9 million.

6. “The Strangers: Chapter 1,” $5.6 million.

7. “Sight,” $2.7 million.”

8. “Challengers,” $1.4 million.

9. “Babes,” $1.1 million.

10. “Back to Black,” $1.1 million.

Forty-five years after George Miller introduced audiences to Mad Max, the auteur may have finally hit the end of the road through the postapocalyptic wasteland unless he finds some high-octane gasoline soon.

The revered filmmaker’s Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga bowed to a disappointing $32 million domestically for the four-day Memorial Day weekend and $36.5 million overseas, diminishing hopes for Mad Max: The Wasteland, another Max installment Miller has been toying with for years.

Miller and Nico Lathouris wrote the scripts for both The Wasteland and Furiosa as part of the development process of Mad Max: Fury Road, the 2015 Warner Bros. film that became a surprise awards season juggernaut, winning six Oscars, and which became an instant action classic. The Wasteland would follow Max Rockatansky in the year before Fury Road, and is said to involve a young mother — and (naturally) include plenty of action.

In recent weeks, Miller has acknowledged much was hinging on Furiosa in terms of the possibility of The Wasteland. “I’ll definitely wait to see how this [Furiosa] goes, before we even think about it,” Miller told journalists May 16, the morning after the dystopian action-adventure played at the Cannes Film Festival to a seven-minute standing ovation. Sources agree that Wasteland’s fate is complicated by Furiosa‘s box office, but stress it wasn’t even in development. For its part, Warners — where Miller is a beloved figure — says it is incredibly proud of Furiosa.

The reaction from moviegoers is likely as positive as Miller hoped; it boasts a 90 percent positive audience score rating on Rotten Tomatoes and earned a B+ Cinemascore. But in a troubling and unexpected twist, far fewer females and younger male adults showed up than came out for Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road nine years ago.

On Fury Road’s opening weekend, the split was 60 percent male to 40 percent, according to sources with access to exit surveys conducted by PostTrak. But Furiosa’s audience was 71 percent male and 29 percent female, a worrisome decline and a startling number for a feature marketed as a female-driven vehicle. And the 18-24 age group, who are the most frequent moviegoers, plummeted from 31 percent for Fury Road to 21 percent for Furiosa.

Observers note that Fury Road aside, the male-fueled Mad Max series has always catered to a somewhat niche audience. The first three films, starring Mel Gibson, grossed less than $70 million combined domestically.

“IP like Mad Max and Ghostbusters is old, and they have the fans they’re going to have,” says one theater chain executive. “If studios can budget to that, they might make some decent money.”

Talk of making Miller’s next Mad Max film could resurface if Furiosa gets a major tune up and enjoys a road trip down the box office highway, as Fury Road did thanks to a strong multiplier. But many veteran box office pundits are doubtful whether such a recovery is possible, with one rival studio saying it could have a hard time getting past $90 million domestically.

Fury Road, which successfully rebooted the franchise by recasting Gibson with Tom Hardy and introducing Charlize Theron’s Furiosa, opened to $45.3 million domestically on its way to grossing $379.4 million worldwide — a juggernaut by the standards of the franchise, and a modest hit by Hollywood standards considering it had a net budget of at least $157 million before marketing. Still, it had an outsized cultural impact, enough for the previous regime at Warner Bros. to greenlight Furiosa, as it seemed the studio had a revitalized franchise on its hands, and it would be a way of honoring Miller and the 45-year anniversary of Mad Max. Miller, who remains a beloved figure within the studio, prefers to shoot practically as much as possible before having visual effects supplement the rest, which pushes up production costs.

Miller opted not to bring back Theron, as he felt that de-aging technology used in films such as Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman was distracting to audiences. (Theron, for her part, said she was sad not to return, despite her grueling experience shooting the first one.) Instead, Miller cast Anya Taylor-Joy as a younger version of Theron’s titular character and added Chris Hemsworth as a warlord. Furiosa is also a Mad Max movie without Mad Max (save for a small cameo).

“I think Furiosa suffered without Charlize. People who see the movie love it. The problem is getting them into theaters. She would have been able to do that,” says one studio insider.

Adds a veteran Hollywood executive, “Fury Road was an outlier in the series. It also had a hot young star and a huge female star. Nine years later, it had neither.”

Furiosa caps a May that will go down in infamy in box office lore. Due to the strikes, mega-tentpoles that have come to define summer were delayed, prompting moviegoing overall to plummet and theater chains hoping for a better 2025 (“Just survive til ’25” has become a mantra for studios and theater owners). Miller’s film was never intended to be an all-audience tentpole that anchors Memorial Day — last year, The Little Mermaid debuted to $118 million — but like other recent titles, it still came in well behind tracking predictions of $40 to $45 million.

Wall Street and Hollywood knew this year was going to be tough, and say declarations that theatrical is over are overblown.

“Let’s see what happens next year with Mission: Impossible and in 2026 with the next Star Wars movie,” says box office analyst Eric Handler of Roth Capital.

All eyes are now on June’s Inside Out 2 and July’s Despicable Me 4 and Deadpool & Wolverine to energize the marketplace and help other films in the process.

“This fever will hopefully break in June and July with an overperformance by at least one of the high-profile films to get the wind back in the sails of the box office,” says Paul Dergarabedian of Comscore.

As for Furiosa, it has the upcoming weekend to itself and will still be playing in Imax and premium large-format screens, which ponied up a significant portion of the opening weekend gross. Then, it will have to contend with another vehicle and gun-heavy feature, Sony’s Bad Boys: Ride or Die.

Denis Villeneuve is both humbled and a little disappointed that Dune: Part Two is still rocking at the box office.

While in Toronto Friday to receive the Academy Icon Award at the 2024 Canadian Screen Awards, the director said he was “disappointed to still be number one. … I hope soon that there will be other successes at the box office. I hope, sooner or later, that this summer box office will be much better.”

Released on March 1, Dune: Part Two has grossed more than $711 million worldwide. It remains the top grossing movie of 2024, ahead of Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire ($567M).

“I think we need movies that are theatrical experiences, that will fully embrace the power of the theatre, and I’m not just talking about Dune 2,” Villeneuve went on to say. “Of course I’m talking about many movies. A movie like Civil War, for instance, is a strong example of a movie that absolutely used the power of the theatre,” Villeneuve told reporters. “I was lucky that Part 2 did reach the audience, I wish it would happen more often, honestly.”

Earlier Saturday, Deadline reported the box office was down 66% from a year ago.

Alcon/Sony’s The Garfield Movie, as expected, is showing his teeth against Warner Bros’ Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga in a second-weekend faceoff between the two, $13M to $11.5M. The Garfield Movie took in $3.7M at 4,018 theaters yesterday, while Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga made $3.05M at 3,864.