FURIOSA: A MAD MAX SAGA | THE GARFIELD MOVIE | SIGHT openings | Sequel films update | May 24 to 26, 2024 Memorial Day weekend
Opening weekend box office, charts and commentary
The current weekend: May 24 to 26, 2024 (Memorial Day weekend)
1) Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga opening
- This is a weak opening for Mad Max’s 5th episode. The 3-day weekend figure is average for these films, but you have to acknowledge the series’s strength coming into Furiosa. The previous picture, Fury Road, catapulted Mad Max to blockbuster status, finishing with $380.4m worldwide in May 2015.
In spite of outstanding reviews and a good audience score (a B+ CinemaScore), this is a sharp drop from Fury Road’s start:
- When you pull action movies apart, pure/hard action is the smallest type at the box office. Superheroes, action adventures and sci-fi are much bigger pictures. Mad Max and John Wick set the standard for hard action, but pending final numbers, this opening is no more than average for the genre.
2) The Garfield Movie opening
- This is a good start for the 3rd Garfield movie. Garfield is not among the animation elites, but it's reasonably budgeted (the cost was an estimated $60m), and it does well overseas ($49m in foreign BO so far, with a big haul from Mexico: $15.6m and counting).
The domestic weekend is below average, but in this case, average includes the animation juggernauts (Toy Story 3, Ice Age 3, Shrek the Third, Madagascar 3, et al.). Garfield 3 is not on that level, but it’s doing what it’s supposed to do, with a big contribution from foreign. This is a good bounce-back after a misfired sequel in 2006:
3) Sight opening
- This is a weak opening for an inspirational drama. Angel Studios knows how to connect with its audience, but this is below par:
Sight is about a poor Chinese boy who escapes a bleak life in Communist China during the Cultural Revolution, comes to America, and with hard work, becomes a brilliant eye surgeon. Inspirational dramas do very little business abroad, and you can bet this picture isn’t going to see the light of day in China.
4) Sequel films update
- The 39 sequels released since the beginning of 2023 are arriving after longer breaks from the prior episode; they're getting superior reviews; and they're holding their audiences better than the 94 sequels in 2017, 2018 and 2019.
We’re talking about titles like John Wick 4, Spider-Verse 2, Dune 2, Kung Fu Panda 4, Godzilla x Kong, and Planet of the Apes.
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On the downside, there's been a decline in overseas box office:
- The total number of sequels is steady compared with pre-pandemic lineups — there’s been no cutting back. Sequels are simply showing an improvement in quality.
This weekend, Garfield is up and Mad Max is down, but the longer-term trend stands. Inside Out 2 and Deadpool 3 will open in June and July, and early ticket sales are strong. Overall, this part of the business has performed well over the last year and a half.
- Next weekend we’ll have May box office totals. May is not making progress closing the gap with its pre-pandemic averages, or with May 2023.