A Mad Max Saga a Box-Office Success?

Summary

• Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
  received a standing ovation at Cannes but has underperformed at the box office.
• Despite opening at the top spot on Memorial Day weekend,
  Furiosa
  has the lowest box office opening in almost 30 years.
• The audience for
  Furiosa
  leans heavily male, with fewer female viewers compared to
  Fury Road
  in 2015.

When Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, the fifth installment in the Mad Max franchise and a prequel to Fury Road, was screened at the Cannes Film Festival, just over a week before the film’s theatrical debut, the screening was followed by a rapturous six-minute standing ovation. Set 15 to 20 years before the events of Fury Road, Furiosa stars Anya Taylor-Joy as a younger version of Imperator Furiosa, played by Charlize Theron in Fury Road, and Chris Hemsworth as her main nemesis, gleefully wicked biker warlord Dementus.

The warm Cannes reception elicited a tearful reaction from Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga director and franchise mastermind George Miller, along with the prequel’s stars. However, despite receiving generally excellent audience and critical reviews, Furiosa has underachieved at the box office.

One of the reasons given for the prequel’s disappointing box-office performance is that audiences preferred to see a sequel to Mad Max: Fury Road instead of a prequel, while others believe that the now approximately 45-year-old and increasingly male-skewing Mad Max franchise has simply run its course.

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga Led Worst Memorial Day Weekend in Nearly 30 Years

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In its opening weekend of release on the four-day Memorial Day box-office weekend, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, which was projected to gross approximately $40 million domestically over the four-day frame, debuted with a three-day gross of approximately $25.5 million and a four-day total of $32.3 million.

In comparison, Mad Max: Fury Road, which opened one week prior to the Memorial Day weekend in 2015, grossed approximately $45.4 million in its opening weekend and then $31.2 million over the four-day Memorial Day weekend. While Furiosa topped the Memorial Day weekend box office in its opening weekend of release, the $32.3 million figure represents the lowest opening for a Memorial Day weekend-leading film since 1995, when Casper topped the Memorial Day weekend box office with a four-day total of $22.1 million.

Unlike Fury Road, which remained in the Top 10 at the domestic box office for seven weekends, Furiosa isn’t showing signs of having similarly enduring strength at the box office. On Memorial Day, the Fury Road prequel finished third at the domestic box office, behind The Garfield Movie and IF.

In addition, the film led the weakest Memorial Day box-office weekend since 1995. For the 2024 four-day box-office weekend, all movies combined to gross just over $132.1 million, down over 35% from last year, when The Little Mermaid topped the weekend with a four-day gross of approximately $118.8 million.

The Garfield Movie Has Taken a Big Bite Out of Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

Furiosa: A Mad Saga opened alongside the animated comedy film The Garfield Movie, which was projected to gross approximately $30 million over the four-day frame. While The Garfield Movie exceeded this projection with a gross of over $31.2 million, the underperformance of Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga made the race much closer than anyone expected.

Moreover, more people in North America have seen The Garfield Movie theatrically than have seen Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga due to the fact the average ticket price that people have paid to see The Garfield Movie is nearly $2 lower than the price of admission to see the R-rated Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga.

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga Lacks Broad Audience Appeal

Although a female-led film, Furiosa has attracted fewer female viewers than Fury Road did in 2015. While the theatrical audience for Mad Max: Fury Road was approximately 60% male, the audience for Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is presently a whopping 72% male. In terms of age, while the 18-to-34 demographic presently accounts for 55% of the audience for Furiosa, within the 18-to-24 demographic, this falls to 21%, compared to 31% for Mad Max: Fury Road. Over the Memorial Day weekend, less than 5% of the prequel’s audience was aged between 13 and 17, while adults over the age of 55 accounted for less than 10% of the film’s total audience.

These statistics reflect a fanboy-driven, niche-oriented franchise, in which the universally acclaimed Mad Max: Fury Road, which grossed over $380 million at the worldwide box office and won six Academy Awards, represents an outlier in the series. Moreover, while Fury Road is deservedly thought of as being a franchise renaissance masterpiece, the film, which had a combined marketing and production cost of over $200 million, nonetheless posted a theatrical loss.

The box-office failure of Furiosa, which carries a production cost of nearly $170 million, has fueled speculation that George Miller’s next planned Mad Max film, titled Mad Max: The Wasteland, is unlikely to happen, at least for the foreseeable future, unless Miller is willing to make a film within a much narrower budget and scale than what the visionary Miller and his followers are likely comfortable with. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is playing in theaters now.