'Furiosa' Had the Lowest-Grossing Memorial Day Box Office in 29 Years

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The big story at the multiplex this weekend, insofar as we still have those, was that Furiosa combined with Garfield for the lowest-grossing Memorial Day weekend box office in 29 years — since Casper in 1995, not adjusting for inflation. Adjusting for inflation, it was even worse. Furiosa grossed $26.3 milliong Friday-Sunday, and $32 million for the full holiday weekend. Fury Road opened with $45 million domestic in three days back in 2015.

Garfield failing (at $31.1 million), sure, that’s easy to explain away, a pretty terrible-looking movie based on a cartoon that already has a few movie versions, appealing only to the most desperate-for-family-entertainment parents. That’s a movie you put on in the back of a three-rowed vehicle on a road trip, not one you see in the theater. But Furiosa? That was a pretty great movie, and a sequel to a hit. (Which also cost $168 million, to Garfield’s $60). Unfortunately, the audience for it in North America was 72% male and barely did any business with above 55-year-olds. With those two as the biggest movies opening, the news wasn’t great.

The numbers are looking pretty grim across the board, down 37% even from the same time last year. As The Hollywood Reporter notes, a lot of the big “tentpoles” that would normally be opening in May have been pushed back because of the SAG strikes last year.

So partly this is an expected lull. Furiosa was never going to play like a Marvel movie from five years ago. Furiosa is a blockbuster to me and probably you and the other dorks who follow the movie industry, but was also always sort of a grindhouse-y franchise with limited normie appeal. The headlines are only treating it like a huge blockbuster because the actual huge blockbusters weren’t there to write about.

And probably the new reality is that no movies are going to open like Marvel movies from five years ago. It feels like studios are still greenlighting based on IP and franchises and all the classic signifiers and expecting the kinds of massive openings that, for the most part, don’t really happen anymore. The correllary is that you also occasionally get slow openings and sleeper hits for movies like Anyone But You. I have a feeling that Furiosa is going to play longer than the analysts are giving it credit for.

It’s sad to see the theatrical experience become a less important activity for generations younger than millennials, with fewer movies and lower grosses, but it also sure seems like the business is starting to evolve in a way that favors medium budgets and movies that aren’t just banking on IP recognition and huge opening weekends. That feels like a good thing. Maybe if we could actually start enforcing the antitrust legislation already on the books that helped give us movies as cultural touchstones, we might have something.

Or we could just start combining IP. Fast and Furiosa 8: Hobbs’ Revenge, anyone? I think that would be clean and rad and powerful.

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