Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga may have defeated The Garfield Movie to win the domestic weekend box office, but it also had the worst Memorial Day opening in 30 years with $32.0 million.
As reported by Comscore, Furiosa also earned that $32.0 million over the 4-day holiday weekend and only brought in $26.3 million in its first three days. As of Sunday, May 26, Furiosa had added another $33.3 million, which makes its global total roughly $65.3 million. It still has a ways to go to recoup its $161 million production budget before marketing.
Not counting 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic began and theaters were mostly closed, we have to go all the way back to 1994 to find a film that opened to less money than Furiosa during the Memorial Day holiday weekend, and that movie would be Casper with $22.0 million.
While Mad Max: Fury Road didn’t open during the Memorial Day weekend in 2015, it did bring in a bit more at $45.4 million. It ended its theatrical run with $153.6 million in North America and $379.4 million worldwide.
The box office performance of Furiosa was not due to a majority of negative reviews, however, as it is currently sitting at a 90% on Rotten Tomatoes. Here at IGN, we gave Furiosa a rare 10/10.
In our Furiosa review, we said, “George Miller’s Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga weaves a hero’s journey of epic proportions, ushering in a powerful reflection on what it means to live and love in a dying world.”
As a whole, the estimated 4-day Domestic box office for Memorial Day is $128.3 million, which is also the worst of its kind for nearly three decades.
As for The Garfield Movie, it only narrowly lost to Furiosa as it earned $31.1 million over the 4-day holiday weekend.
In our The Garfield Movie review, we said that it “applies some nice animation to an annoying all-ages comedy of product placement, phone jokes, and daddy issues.”
IF placed third during the holiday weekend with $21.0 million, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes took fourth place with $17.2 million, and The Fall Guy rounded out the top five with $7.6 million.
For more, check out our explainer of the ending of Furiosa, why the film proves that Anya Taylor-Joy is one of our modern movie stars, and why we think the Mad Max movies don’t need Mad Max anymore.
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Adam Bankhurst is a writer for IGN. You can follow him on X/Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on TikTok.
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