Battle of the Flops: Furiosa vs. Borderlands

As it happened the summer of 2024 had two big-budget sci-fi action movies based on well-established franchises that centered on female protagonists adventuring across a post-apocalyptic, or at least post-apocalyptic-looking, desert landscape--the Mad Max franchise film Furiosa, and the adaptation of the Borderlands video game. Both of them flopped--and flopped so badly that I expect to see them on Deadline's list of the five worst money-losers of the year when it comes out this spring.

But which is likely to come out "ahead?" (Or "behind?")

The publicly available figures indicate that Furiosa cost the studio $168 million to produce, and $100 million to "market," so let us assume an outlay from the studio of $270 million. The movie made $174 million in theaters. Given that the studio typically gets half that, this gives them back $85 million or so. Of course, after that there are the post-theatrical revenue streams, which count for relatively more with low earners. (Consider 2022, when Avatar 2 made $2.3 billion in ticket sales, and the studio got almost $1.3 billion in theatrical rentals. The movie also made a very good $350 million in home entertainment, television, streaming--but this is scarcely a quarter of the net from the theaters. By contrast Lightyear made a mere $112 million from theatrical rentals, but $155 million from home entertainment/ television/streaming, about forty percent more than its theatrical net--and nearly half what the far more theatrically successful Avatar made from those income streams.) Given parallels like that Furiosa could thus match or exceed its theatrical income from these sources, pulling in, perhaps, $100 million, perhaps even $120 million. The resulting $170-$200 million or so would thus leave the studio in the hole on this one by some $70-$100 million (an estimate in accord with the industry papers' reports of insider expectations).

By contrast Borderlands cost perhaps $145 million to make and market, significantly less, but made only $32 million in theaters. Working out to perhaps $15 million in the till, the question is then how much it could make from the post-theatrical revenue streams. That figure is low enough that the movie could triple or even quadruple its take here, raising its income to $50 or even $60 million--but still leaving the backers $85-$95 million in the hole.

There is an overlap here, which makes it too close to call--but it seems safe to say that these losses, considerable as they are, will still work out to less than Joker 2, at least, suffered, and more than the loss on other flops like The Fall Guy or, as seems possible, Gladiator II, relegating the rest of the contenders to the lower ranks.