MOVIE NEWS – Despite excellent reviews, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga seems to have flopped at the box office…

When Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, the fifth instalment in the Mad Max franchise and prequel to Fury Road, premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, just over a week before the film’s theatrical release, the screening was followed by a six-minute standing ovation. Furiosa takes place 15-20 years before the events of Fury Road and stars Anya Taylor-Joy as the younger version of Imperator Furiosa, played by Charlize Theron in Fury Road, and Chris Hemsworth as his main nemesis, the hilariously evil biker warlord Dementus.

The warm reception at Cannes prompted a tearful reaction from Furiosa director and franchise mastermind George Miller, as well as the stars of the prequel.

However, despite the fact that the film generally received excellent reviews – including from us – it underperformed at the box office.

One of the reasons for the disappointing box office failure of the prequel is that audiences wanted to see a sequel to Mad Max: Fury Road instead of the prequel. Others say the now-about-45-year-old, increasingly moribund Mad Max franchise simply ran out of time.

Furiosa led the worst Memorial Day weekend in nearly 30 years

Furiosa was projected to gross around $40 million domestically in its opening weekend over the four-day U.S. Memorial Day weekend. It debuted with approximately $25.5 million in three days and $32.3 million in four days.

By comparison, Mad Max: Fury Road, which opened a week before Memorial Day weekend in 2015, brought in about $45.4 million in its opening weekend and $31.2 million over the four-day Memorial Day weekend.

Furiosa topped the Memorial Day weekend box office in its first weekend of release. But the $32.3 million total marks the lowest opening number for a Memorial Day weekend lead since 1995. Casper topped the Memorial Day weekend box office at the time with a four-day total of $22.1 million.

Unlike Fury Road, which stayed in the top 10 at the U.S. box office for seven weekends, Furiosa shows no signs of being a similarly sustained force at the box office. Over the holiday weekend, the Fury Road prequel finished third at the box office, behind The Garfield Movie and IF.

For the 2024 four-day box office weekend, all the films combined for just over $132.1 million, down more than 35% from last year.

Then The Little Mermaid led the weekend with a four-day gross of about $118.8 million.

Could George Miller’s film fail because of Garfield?!

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga opened alongside the animated comedy The Garfield Movie, which promised an income of about 30 million dollars in four days.

While the Garfield film exceeded that projection by taking in over $31.2 million, Furiosa’s underperformance made the competition much tighter than anyone expected.

In addition, more people in North America saw the Garfield movie in theatres than the new Mad Max movie. That’s because the average ticket price for a Garfield movie is nearly $2 less than the price of seeing the R-rated Furiosa.

The new Mad Max spinoff doesn’t appeal to a broad audience

Although Furiosa is a women’s film, it still attracted fewer female viewers than Fury Road in 2015. While Fury Road’s audience was about 60% male, Furiosa’s audience is currently 72% male. In terms of age, while the 18-34 age group currently makes up 55% of Furiosa’s audience, within the 18-24 age group, this proportion drops to 21%, compared to 31% for Mad Max: Fury Road.

Over Memorial Day weekend, less than 5% of the prequel’s audience was between the ages of 13 and 17, while adults over 55 made up less than 10% of the film’s total audience.

Those stats reflect a fan-driven, gap-filling franchise that includes the universally acclaimed Mad Max: Fury Road, which grossed more than $380 million at the box office worldwide and won six Academy Awards. The standout piece of the series.

Additionally, while Fury Road is rightfully considered the franchise’s renaissance masterpiece, the film, which had combined marketing and production costs of more than $200 million, was a loss in theatres.

The box office failure of Furiosa, which cost nearly $170 million to produce, has fueled speculation that George Miller’s next planned Mad Max film, Mad Max: The Wasteland, is unlikely to happen. At least for the foreseeable future. Unless Miller is willing to make a film on a much tighter budget and scale than the visionary director and his followers will likely see fit…

Source: Deadline, Box Office Mojo