Notes on Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga's Opening Weekend

As compared with last summer--and even this spring--I have been paying the box office less mind as of late. Part of this has been having less data to go on since Boxoffice Pro drew back from its publication of systematic, detailed, regularly updated forecasts, but part of it has been that in the main it is the same story over and over again--the contraction of the American box office, the sharply fallen returns on Hollywood's longtime box office strategy. And even where that story is concerned it seems that the early summer releases from which little was ever expected--The Fall Guy movie, the Planet of the Apes sequel no one ever asked for, etc.--mean little next to the bigger releases coming only relatively late in this season--with Inside Out 2 (due out only June 14!) generally considered the first.

Still, the discussion of the opening of Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga got my attention. In spite of the bizarre talking up of the prior Mad Max movie as if it were some kind of record-crusher it was a merely respectable performer even by pre-pandemic standards--just #21 on the list of the year's domestic and worldwide grossers according to Box Office Mojo--and frankly a weak one given the reported $150 million production budget (reflected in the movie's reportedly losing money). It was not an obviously logical business decision to continue the saga from there, let alone do that in the form of a prequel to a character who is not the actual Mad Max (the strategy not of a main line Star Wars film but a Solo) put out a decade after that marginal performance with a different lead. Even if the movie was green-lit without the benefit of knowledge of how tough the market would become that ought to have been restrained expectations for it even pre-pandemic ought to have been lower still by mid-2024.

Considering the figures one may as well start with how Mad Max: Fury Road really did. That movie opened to $45 million over three days in 2015--the equivalent of $60 million in mid-2024 terms when adjusted for inflation. In fairness the box office-watchers expected less than that, about $40-$50 million in the first three days, and just $45-$55 million over the four day Friday-to-Monday Memorial Day weekend period. Still, anyone with a sense of how box office grosses have declined in the last few years (as the frequency of moviegoing practically halved) might suspect that a mere 16 to 33 percent real drop they projected was still on the optimistic side. Consider, for example, how even before the debacle of Captain Marvel 2 the Marvel Cinematic Universe's films (from Thor 4 to Guardians of the Galaxy 3) were doing just 50-80 percent of the business of the preceding films in their series'--a proportion which works out less to $40-$50 million than $30-$50 million, even with what was then, and even now remains, a stronger brand than Mad Max is in 2024. And indeed even the $30 million was more than the film took in over its three day period, its take just $25 million--while the fourth day does not get it much past the $30 million mark (at last report, just $31 million).

The obvious conclusion is that, even if expectations are lower than they were before, they still have not fallen anywhere near enough to give the professional box office-watchers a really realistic sense of just what the market is like now. Will they learn?

I wouldn't hold my breath--the more in as so much of what passes for analysis is mere claquing.