Box Office Breakdown for Weekend of 5/26/24

BO Breakdown 5/26/24

Movies

What’s up, Geeks + Gamers? It’s ODIN!

Furiosa and Garfield Battle at the Box Office as IF Struggles

Going into Memorial Day weekend, there was a lot of reporting about how much of a hit the new Mad Max film, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, would be; now that the numbers are in, we instead have one of the worst Memorial Day weekend box office takes that we have seen in a while (possibly ever). Instead of domination by Furiosa, it struggled against the new iteration of Garfield as they both battled for the top spot domestically. What this tells us is that while The Garfield Movie, which has a reported budget of $60 million, is looking to make a profit quite quickly, Furiosa, with a budget of $168 million, will likely be another massive loss at the box office for Warner Bros. Though the film is mediocre, at best, some of the factors that are likely impacting this incredibly weak opening are things like a loss of audience after the bait and switch that was Fury Road, the weak state of the economy impacting spending power, and the lack of effective marketing.

According to the official Sunday estimates, Furiosa is expected to win the weekend with an incredibly weak 3-day total of $25,550,000, and The Garfield Movie is looking to get second place with $24,775,000. Whereas The Garfield Movie is on the way to breaking even/making a profit, likely over the next couple of weeks, Furiosa is looking to lose around $100 million when all is said and done. We will be able to make official projections next weekend. 

According to the-numbers.com, the top 5 this weekend domestically were:

1. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga ($25,550,000 as a new release)
2. The Garfield Movie ($24,775,000 as a new release)
3. IF (52% drop in 2nd weekend)
4. Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (48% drop in 3rd weekend)
5. The Fall Guy (29% drop in 4th weekend)

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, IF, and  Furiosa All Looking to Flop

Based on the third-weekend numbers for Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, which continues to slow, the film currently stands at a loss of -$104,652,437 using my RCC method. In a best-case scenario, Apes will still be looking at over $50 million in losses, which paints a very different picture than the hopeful one many in the box office media tried to spin when the film opened. 

Joining Apes in the financial flops category is the new John Krasinski film, IF, which, after two weeks, we can now project will lose between -$80,428,286 and -$46,599,600 when its run finishes. Though there is always a chance that a film geared towards families could end up holding for a longer period as the summer officially begins, the numbers do not provide much hope of that happening. 

Moving to the new Mad Max film, Furiosa, it is important to note just how poorly these opening weekend numbers compare to even 2015’s Fury Road, which barely broke even (and arguably lost money). Fury Road sold roughly 5,388,865 tickets domestically in its opening weekend; in today’s dollars, that would be about $59,056,566. One important thing to note is that this was over a typical 3-day period. In the case of Furiosa, which was being given projections of close to $50 million domestically over the 4-day Memorial Day weekend, it only ended up with $25,550,000 over three days… yikes. Not only is this well below the adjusted numbers for Fury Road, but it also means projected ticket sales for the first three days are about 1,965,385 tickets. This means that Furiosa is tracking almost three times less than Fury Road. If this trend continues, it would also mean the film has a good chance of losing over $100 million when all is said and done. We will have a full analysis of this and more next week!

If you want further analysis on these or any other films, check out the full charting I do over at my website. Have a wonderful rest of your day, and as always, God bless! 

(If you ever want further insight into my methodology, see my previous articles HERE and HERE and the RCC method I use to break down movies internationally HERE.)