Box Office: Furiosa Flops But Wins Worst Memorial Day Weekend Since 1995

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga barely beats The Garfield Movie at the 2024 Memorial Day weekend box office.

By Cameron Bonomolo

Theaters were a Wasteland over Memorial Day weekend.

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga outraced the animated The Garfield Movie to take No. 1 at the box office, with Warner Bros. reporting a $26.3 million three-day and $32 million over the four-day holiday weekend. Filmmaker George Miller's R-rated Fury Road prequel, which stars Anya Taylor-Joy and Chris Hemsworth and is budgeted at $168 million, was in a dead heat with the Chris Pratt-voiced Garfield, which consumed $24 million over the weekend and $31.1 million for the four days. 

That makes Furiosa the lowest-grossing Memorial Day weekend winner since Casper spooked up $22.1 million in the same time frame in 1995. Its 2015 predecessor Mad Max: Fury Road, starring Tom Hardy in the title role and Charlize Theron as Imperator Furiosa, opened at No. 2 with $45.4m (behind Pitch Perfect 2) and grossed $31.2 million over the four-day Memorial Day weekend (its second week in theaters).

Garfield opened lower than the second weekends of 2000's Dinosaur ($39m) and 2006's Over the Hedge ($35.3m); other animated movies to open in the Memorial Day time frame include 2002's Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron ($23.2m), 2013's Epic ($42.8m), and 2022's The Bob's Burgers Movie ($14.8m). The animated Garfield's worldwide total currently sits at $98.2 million.

Related:

Furiosa's $32 million four-day puts it behind other low-grossing Memorial Day No. 1s like 2010's Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time ($37.8m), 2015's Tomorrowland ($42.6m), and 2016's Alice Through the Looking Glass ($33.5m). When including the holiday weekend grosses of other movies still in theaters — IF (No. 3 at $16.1m), Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (No. 4 at $13.4m), and The Fall Guy (No. 5 at $5.9m) — the domestic total is projected at roughly $100 million, the lowest since the COVID-stricken 2021 ($79 million). (2020 is excluded as theaters were shuttered during the pandemic.) 

The Memorial Day weekend 2024 box office is down about 36% from 2023's $161 million. Last year, Disney's live-action The Little Mermaid made a splash as the fifth-best opening with $118.8 million, behind 2022's Top Gun: Maverick ($160.5m), 2007's Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End ($139.8m), 2008's Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull ($126.9m), and 2006's X-Men: The Last Stand ($122.8m).

Trending Now: