“Furiosa” is a box office flop over Memorial Day weekend

“Moviegoers don’t want original stories, where important franchise characters are portrayed not by the actor who created and defined them, but by a younger, less well-known actor,” says Scott Mendelsohn, a box office analyst who publishes a subscription newsletter. “, he wrote on Saturday.

Some film executives have said that “Furiosa,” directed by George Miller and co-starring Chris Hemsworth, may have been released too early after the similar-looking “Dune: Part Two,” which had huge ticket sales in March. At the same time, they added that “Furiosa” may have been released too long after “Fury Road,” allowing the “Mad Max” fan base to calm down.

There’s also a lack of momentum at the box office, noted Paul Dergarabedian, a senior media analyst at comScore. Hollywood’s summer season kicked off with The Fall Guy, which reached $28 million in ticket sales earlier this month, the lowest summer opening since 1995. The box office in April suffered from a lack of films, which studios blamed On the ongoing repercussions of union strikes. In 2023.

“The current distress demonstrates the importance of overall market health in the months leading up to this critically important movie season,” Mr. Dergarabedian said in an email.

Theaters in the United States and Canada were expected to sell about $125 million worth of tickets over the weekend, down about 40 percent from last year, according to Comscore. Year-to-date, ticket sales in the two countries totaled $2.6 billion, down 22 percent from the same period last year, ComScore said.

However, Mr. Dergarabedian is optimistic.

“The game is not over for theaters this summer as many have asserted,” he said, noting that other sequels such as “Inside Out 2,” “Despicable Me 4” and “Deadpool & Wolverine” could be big hits in June and July. If these films succeed, he said, Hollywood could salvage “the perception of the film industry as a vital and relevant part of the entertainment ecosystem.”