“Furiosa,” poor Memorial Day box office puts Hollywood in the spotlight

Memorial Day weekend is usually a big occasion for moviegoers and Hollywood, but this year’s numbers show otherwise.

Warner Bros. “Furiosa” beat out Sony’s “The Garfield Movie” with just $32 million domestically to take first place over the four-day weekend, according to Comscore estimates. The final results will be published this week.

Now the heat is on for Hollywood to present the remainder of the summer movie season.

“Furiosa” was the lowest-grossing movie at the Memorial Day box office since 1995’s “Casper,” leaving behind 2020, when Covid closed theaters and halted production. (Excluding 2020 and 2021, this was also the worst overall Memorial Day weekend in Hollywood since 1995 as well.)

Last year, Disney’s live-action version of “The Little Mermaid” grossed $118 million domestically over the holiday. The year before that, Paramount’s “Top Gun: Maverick” opened to $160 million over Memorial Day weekend on its way to a domestic total of more than $700 million.

But this year, the holiday framework came with several problems, Paul Dergarabedian, a comScore senior analyst, told NBC News on Monday.

“This was already a historically slow Memorial Day weekend for movie theaters. But this result was the result of many factors including the disruption of release dates for many films as a result of the Hollywood strikes,” Dergarabedian said. “Lack of retention is the first quarter of success.”

He also noted that no film so far this year has opened with a $100 million weekend, which has become common in the era of blockbuster comic books.

Last year’s strikes, which halted production last year for several months, caused studios to delay some tentpole films. For example, Paramount’s eighth film, “Mission: Impossible,” was scheduled to be released in June of this year, but will now arrive in theaters next year. Disney’s “Lion King” prequel, “Mufasa,” is scheduled to be released in December instead of the summer, as originally planned. The film industry is expected to return to a more normal schedule next year.

Memorial Day weekend also didn’t have a Marvel movie paving the way for other movies to do big business. For more than a decade, effects-packed comic book movies have generally kicked off the unofficial summer blockbuster season with big spring releases. Last year, “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3” grossed $118 million domestically in its opening weekend in early May.

But this year, Universal’s “The Fall Guy” and Paramount’s “IF” got things off to a disappointing start. Each has grossed less than $100 million domestically since their release.

Experts say this summer could see total ticket sales barely exceed $3 billion compared to last summer’s $4.1 billion in domestic sales, driven largely by the films “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer,” which fans call “Barpenheimer.” These films opened on the same weekend in July and went on to earn hundreds of millions of dollars each.

However, this summer offers some potential successes. “Despicable Me 4” (July 5), from Universal, which shares a parent company with NBC; Universal and Warner Bros. “The Hurricanes” (July 19); Both Disney’s “Inside Out 2” (June 14) and “Deadpool and Wolverine” (July 26) are expected to attract large audiences.

These releases “will allow the industry to reset itself and move the industry in a positive direction,” Dergarabedian said.