What a lovely day? Well, it is if your name is Garfield.
Our “number one” movie this weekend is Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, but that statement comes with a number of disclaimers. First off, that only goes for the three-day weekend estimates, with Furiosa earning $25.4 million compared to The Garfield Movie’s $24.7 million. Here’s the thing, though: I am almost certain Warner Bros. is bluffing here. They have refused to release holiday weekend estimates for Monday, which Sony has taken full advantage of by proclaiming Garfield the Memorial Day victor with a $31 million four-day haul. And I’d be willing to bet actual money (not a lot of it, mind you) that we’re going to learn that the fat cat won the three-day weekend too once actuals come in.
In other words, Warner Bros. is trying to save face here, because there’s really no way to sugarcoat the $168-million production’s dismal numbers. Furiosa is absolutely going to lose the studio some dough, and while we can point at the rave reviews all we like, from a commercial standpoint, this was always going to be a tough sell. Ultimately, I think everyone has been overestimating the popularity of Furiosa as a character, at least as far as an origin story is concerned. Who was really dying to learn why she cut her hair? We already got all of the information we needed about her in Fury Road, as far as I’m concerned, and making a Mad Max extravaganza minus Mad Max was going to be a risky move by default. Furthermore, Furiosa didn’t do anything in its marketing to set itself apart from Fury Road, as from a visual standpoint, it looks like the exact same film. Not that there’s anything “wrong” with that, but when we’re talking about general audiences, it didn’t give them enough of a reason to rush out and see it.
Is Furiosa done? I don’t want to sound overly pessimistic, but probably. Next weekend, there are no major new releases (just in case you need a reminder of the dire state of the summer marquee this year), so that could potentially give it a chance to leg out, but I see no reason to assume that Garfield won’t win there. And I’m not just saying this because I’m a lifelong Garfield fan!
Elsewhere, we have Sight from Angel Studios. This looked like a decent film, but you know, it didn’t have the conspiracy-friendly “the Democrats are kidnapping YOUR children” angle that Sound of Freedom was able to exploit, so this one only made $3 million. I am begging faith-based audiences to start turning up for these movies when they aren’t used for bullshit propaganda. Also, something called Babes opened. I had never heard of it, but it made it into the top ten, which was apparently a big accomplishment. Well done, movie I had never heard of!
Anyway, for more details of this weekend’s box office, you can check out this article from THR. Unfortunately, because Warner Bros. decided to be cute by withholding their studio estimates, most websites I use as sources for this are saving their whole reports until tomorrow. So that means no regular chart this week. Sorry.