This past Friday saw the release of Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga and The Garfield Movie, two movies that had the potential to be fairly decent hits. But this was no Furry-osa frenzy. Instead the two movies together made only about 60 million over the four-day Memorial Day weekend. As such a whole lot of people, even some that don’t follow movies that much, are speculating wildly about what this all means. So, since this is the story of the week, I’m here to chime in with a few of my random thoughts on this discourse.
1. The opening of Furiosa was low. But it wasn’t that low.
Given the fact that Mad Max: Fury Road was beloved by audiences and critics, and was in contention for a lot of big Oscars, it’s easy to forget that the movie was not a massive commercial moneymaker. The Hollywood Reporter calculated that it probably lost a little bit when all the receipts were tallied (20 to 40 million; not bad for a big budget R-rated movie).
It opened to a pretty darn small 45 million domestically before making about 150 domestically. That 45-million-dollar opening does not crack the top 200 openings of 2015. On the other hand, Furiosa had the 9th biggest opening of 2024 (per this chart). Now, I’m not saying Furiosa’s opening was good. These numbers say a lot more about how far we are from 2015 than they do about specific movies of 2024.
If you’d asked me last week what I thought the biggest possible opening for Furiosa was I would have said probably about 50 million, marginally more than Fury Road. This is about double what it made, so Furiosa definitely did underperform. But for the sake of argument, let’s split the difference. If the low end is what happened and the high end is 50-55 million (a lot for any R-rated movie that’s not Oppenheimer or John Wick), let’s say Furiosa opened with 37 million.
Is the narrative any different? I doubt it. That would still be solidly less than Fury Road and still come in on the low end of tracking. When compared to the budget, it would still have a bleak path to making money, and it would still be one of the lowest Memorial Day weekends.
Two quick points about this. 1. The past two decades have seen the start of the summer movie season shift to the start of May, rather than the end. As such this weekend has, in my eyes, ceased to be a movie holiday. 2. Do you think Top Gun: Maverick and The Little Mermaid were hit Memorial Day movies? Or were they hit movies that happened to open then? (I grant that for Maverick it made sense). Pre-COVID Disney had a long history of Memorial Day disappointments with things like Tomorrowland and Solo: A Star Wars Story; the weekend has been fading for a long time.
So, realistically, Furiosa couldn’t win. It was nearly impossible, even with a really good opening, that this movie would get anywhere near making back its budget. So I think any narrative this week that focuses on Furiosa specifically is missing the point.
2. Movie excitement is low.
Simply put, I don’t think people are that excited about the movies coming out right now. This summer so far has seen a pretty low opening for The Fall Guy, a solid enough opening for Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, an pretty disappointing opening for IF. There just doesn’t seem to be that much excitement for these movies.
Many ideas have been offered as to why. “People are tired of sequels.” “Everything looks uninspired.” “People are just waiting for things on streaming.” There’s some truth to all of these, but I don’t think they tell even half the story. People turned out for Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, a sequel that looked to me to be pretty uninspired. And even after it became available at home, there was still an audience for Kung Fu Panda 4.
People may bemoan the fact that 2023’s box office was well below pre-pandemic times. Fine. It’s true. And it’s true that we are a LONG way from 2019. I think any reasonable hope of “returning” to that level was dashed around this time last year. That said, last year at this time, the US gross for movie tickets year to date was around 3.4 billion. We’re around a billion behind that pace this year.
So 2024 has been bleak not in comparison to the halcyon pipedream days of the late 2010s; it’s been bleak compared to the “bad” box office of 2023. And it was bad! Pre-Barbenheimer, every narrative last summer was one of failure. But things are worse now, a lot worse, and I think it’s due to a decline in excitement. And this is tied to…
3. Movie marketing is horrendous.
I’ve written about this before. I’ll probably write about it again. Because I don’t think this is getting enough attention. Movie marketing right now is just so so bad. The First Omen was a great movie with very bad marketing. Challengers was a movie a lot of people liked that also had marketing that’s been widely criticized as misleading. There was nothing in the trailer to make me excited about The Fall Guy or Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes either.
I don’t know why exactly, but studios have either forgotten how to sell their movies or they (wrongly) believe they don’t need to. As we saw with The Marvels last fall, even Marvel movies don’t “sell themselves” anymore. Studios need to put out trailers that actually make people excited about the movie. You’re trying to convince people to 1. Leave their home, 2. Leave the infinite entertainment options that exist at home, 3. Go to another place, 4. Spend money.
This is tough sell.
The last couple years I had the AMC theater pass, but this year I don’t. Because of that my movie going is down. I know longer see everything that comes out. I’m fortunate enough to have a great local theater that shows things for 6 bucks, so the money is not my primary concern. But still, I was planning on seeing Civil War until bad marketing scared me away (I watched it at home and wrote about it here). I probably would have seen Lisa Frankenstein if the marketing had been better. I did see The First Omen in spite of the marketing because the reviews were so good. And mediocre reviews have me thinking I might skip Furiosa too.
I’m not alone. I do value the theatrical experience, especially something forcing me off my phone for two hours, but this is only sometimes worth it. It’s very easy to stay home and watch all the movies you thought about going to 2 months ago now streaming. Movie marketing has to do a better job convincing people this isn’t good enough.
Is there hope? I don’t know.
I should say that the concept of movie theaters will be fine. There’s a theater not too far from me that shows lots of revivals and rare movies. They sold out a screening of Terminator 2 last weekend. People will still go to movies, even if multiplexes don’t always function like we’re used to. And aside from huge budget blockbusters, there are positive signs as Neon and A24 movies consistently find an audience. Specialty box office stuff does well, and when it expands right, usually brings in a decent take. Now, Love Lies Bleeding isn’t out here making 100 million dollars, but I don’t care. Movies like this are finding audiences and playing more readily than they did 10 years ago.
But looking at this summer? Yikes. This weekend there’s…nothing. Or I should say there’s a hodgepodge of head-scratching titles most notably Young Woman and the Sea which has been marketed basically not at all and could easily be a colossal failure for Disney.
Box Office Pro projects Bad Boys: Ride or Die to open between 55 and 75 million. That’s a pretty wide range, but I think anything in that realm would be considered pretty good. I’m skeptical there are enough people out there that care to get it to that number, but the last one overperformed in the early days of 2020, so we’ll see.
The next weekend gives us Inside Out 2. This is the one to circle. Talk right now is in the 80 million range with some wondering about 100. Given the non-factor Pixar has been since 2020, I’ll believe it when I see it. I’m very skeptical this will open that big. I’ve not been impressed with the marketing, and it doesn’t seem that exciting. But there must be perceived excitement somewhere. We’ll see what it actually means. If this really underperforms—with, say, 60 million—then any doom and gloom article (like this one) will suddenly feel quaint in comparison to the full-on industry freakout that will come June 17th.
The July outlook is a little better. Even with the disappointment so far, I struggle to imagine the world where Despicable Me 4 doesn’t do well. I have much less faith in Daredevil and Wolverine, though the pre-sale numbers were huge.
In short, May was just about as bad a box office month as anyone could have imagined it would be. And studios would be right to panic. But it’s really not that complicated.
- Studios need to make better CHEAPER movies, and a lot more of them, so not everything has to be a huge hit to be profitable
- Studios need to actually market these movies so people want to see them
The outlook for the rest of the summer is pretty bleak, but I think movies will be fine…as long as studios change course and do better. But seeing how they handled the strikes last year, I’m not holding my breath.
