We really hope everyone here had a great and enjoyable holiday weekend with family and friends… as the box office was anything but. Where 2023’s The Little Mermaid earned $95M over 3 days and $118M over the extended 4-day weekend, this year’s Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga ($32M) + The Garfield Movie ($31M) + Sight ($3M) combined to earn barely more than half that amount. It would seem that those who previously stressed over The Fall Guy and IF can breathe a little easier knowing that deflated numbers may very well be the norm in 2024.
It’ll be interesting to see where Furiosa and Garfield go from here based on their extreme critics rating differences (90% vs. 38%). Audiences, on the other hand, were approving of both as their RT scores were rather similar (93% vs. 82%), and both earned a ‘B+’ CinemaScore.
As detailed in the Weekend Comparisons 2024-05-28 spreadsheet located here, these are the opening weekends for our 5 ‘major’ releases so far. It’s not pretty.
| Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes | 5/10 | $58M |
| IF | 5/17 | $33M |
| Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga | 5/24 | $32M |
| The Garfield Movie | 5/24 | $31M |
| The Fall Guy | 5/3 | $27M |
Everyone seems to have an opinion as to WHY the Memorial Day weekend box office was so bad, and The Wrap (link) did a really nice job with their analysis of the current state of the theatrical business. Definitely worth a read.
Top 10 IN
- #4 Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
- #5 The Garfield Movie
- #10 Sight
Top 10 OUT
- I Saw the TV Glow
- The Blue Angels
- Dragonkeeper
Holdover News
- Fall Guy had another fantastic hold of -28.5% in its 4th weekend while still playing in nearly 3,000 theaters.
- IF had an ok -52.1% hold in its 2nd weekend, but thanks to the bonus day it scored an excellent 2-week multiplier.
- Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes had a nice -47.4% hold and continues to lead the summer with $127M.
- Back to Black is clutching onto that #9 spot with $5M.
Next Weekend: May 31 isn’t typically a dead point in the summer, but it’s expected to be a quiet weekend coming up for new movies. Among the 4 new Wide releases, only the slasher-horror In a Violent Nature was picked by a player (1 total). With the projected low theater counts for this weekend’s releases (to the point that various sites have alternated multiple between Wide/Limited status), this should be a prime opportunity for all prior movies to capitalize on padding their box office $$$.