Simply dramatic situation at the American box office in what is historically one of the richest holiday weekends of the year and which is instead turning into a nightmare for Hollywood.
To give a small example, a year ago people complained about the “unconvincing” debut of The Little Mermaid, which in four days grossed over 100 million dollars and contributed to closing a 4-day weekend in which the chart collected over 205 million of dollars.
If all goes well, this weekend’s takings will be 40% lower than last year’s, with about $124 million raised overall over four days.
Unfortunately, it is the result of the 2023 strikes, which are having a very harsh impact on the release calendar and Hollywood’s cinematic offering.
The already pessimistic forecasts for a film like Furiosa: A Mad Max Sagahighly appreciated by critics but unable to attract a very large audience (as happened with Mad Max: Fury Road nine years ago), will therefore be disregarded. George Miller’s film took in just $10.2 million on Friday, a figure that includes Thursday’s $3.5 million previews and is the lowest for a Memorial Day Weekend debut in 29 years. Fury Road took in $16.6 million on its first Friday, capping a $45 million three-day weekend (also in second place, beaten by $69.2 million Pitch Perfect 2). Furious, however, will close a four-day weekend with just under $35 million, unless word of mouth kicks into gear. Like its predecessor, the blockbuster earned a CinemaScore B+, which is pretty good.
Things are no better with Garfield: The animated film debuted with $8.4 million on Friday (including $1.9 million from Thursday previews), and could end the long weekend with a similar figure to Furious (being a film for the whole family), but always with a figure lower than expected.
Try to hold on IF – Imaginary friendsin third place, with 4.3 million dollars and a total of 46.8 million dollars, while Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes in fourth place it grossed another 3.4 million dollars and rose to 112 million overall (it exceeded 250 million globally).
The rest of the ranking are films in tenitura, except Babes in eighth place, opening with just $480,000. The slowdown of Back to Blackwhich grossed only 300 thousand dollars and rose to 4.2 million overall.
USA COLLECTIONS FRIDAY 24 MAY 2024
- Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga – $10,200,000 (day) – Total: $10,200,000
- The Garfield Movie – $8,400,000 (day) – Total: $8,400,000
- IF – $4,300,000 (day) – Total: $46,866,792
- Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes – $3,400,000 (day) – Total: $112,849,252
- The Strangers: Chapter 1 – $1,650,000 (day) – Total: $17,383,988
- The Fall Guy – $1,600,000 (day) – Total: $67,891,385
- Sight – $1,099,953 (day) – Total: $1,099,953
- Babes – $480,000 (day) – Total: $707,799
- Challengers – $438,000 (matchday) – Total: $45,532,760
- Back to Black – $300,000 (day) – Total: $4,199,020
Source: BOM
