'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.

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 US$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 US$31.9 million in ticket sales through Memorial Day. Sony estimates its three-day earnings to be US$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 US$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 US$100 million, led by “Top Gun: Maverick’s” record-setting US$160 million launch in 2022. Last year, the live-action “The Little Mermaid” joined the group with a US$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 US$57 million.

“Furiosa” was never expected to join the US$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 US$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 US$45.4 million in May 2015. “Fury Road,” starring Charlize Theron and Tom Hardy, went on to gross nearly US$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 per cent on Rotten Tomatoes) and a splashy international press tour with many buzzy premiere looks from Taylor-Joy. With a reported US$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 US$60 million. Chris Pratt voices the lasagna-loving, Monday-hating orange cat in the movie that got scathing reviews from critics (it has a 37 per cent on Rotten Tomatoes). Audiences meanwhile gave both “Furiosa” and “The Garfield Movie” a B+ CinemaScore and 4.5 stars out of 5 on PostTrak.