Box office: Furiosa, Garfield duke it out in worst Memorial Day weekend since 1995

Also: The Fall Guy had the best hold in the top ten despite already being available on PVOD, and Sight had Angel Studios' lowest opening yet.

So much orange! Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, starring Anya Taylor-Joy, faces off against The Garfield Movie, starring the voice of Chris Pratt.

The bad news this summer keeps getting worse.

Three weeks after The Fall Guy failed to get things going, and one week after IF had a softer opening than expected, all eyes were on two films—two!—that had the potential to turn things around during this, the American Memorial Day weekend.

One, the R-rated Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, was a prequel to one of the most acclaimed action films of the past decade, while the other, the PG-rated The Garfield Movie, had the advantage of being the first new animated film in two and a half months.¹

Expectations for both films were fairly modest compared to the usual blockbusters that come out at this time of year, but both films were expected to land somewhere in the $35 million to $50 million range between Friday and Sunday.

Instead, they grossed only $25 million or so apiece, in what is shaping up to be the worst Memorial Day weekend since 1995 (not counting the Covid-afflicted 2020), when the top-grossing film, Casper, grossed only $16.8 million in its first three days.

And that’s before we take almost 30 years of inflation into account. In 1995, Casper’s opening weekend was the 12th-biggest of the year. Last year, the $25 million or so that Furiosa and Garfield made this weekend wouldn’t have ranked in the top 30.²

Strictly speaking, the month isn’t over yet—the next weekend begins May 31—but there are no major releases planned for next week, so this month is basically a write-off already.

All eyes now fall on Will Smith & Martin Lawrence’s Bad Boys: Ride or Die, the fourth film in the Bad Boys series, which opens June 7. (Interestingly, the first film in the series came out in 1995, just a month and a half before Casper.)

And then, after that, there is Inside Out 2, which opens June 14 and could be Pixar’s first unqualified hit since 2019’s Toy Story 4.

As ever, we shall see.

Meanwhile, on to the top ten. A couple of this week’s highlights:

• The Fall Guy had the best hold of any film from last week’s top ten, despite the fact that it has been available for digital rent or purchase since Tuesday.

• Sight had the lowest opening yet for Angel Studios, the streaming-service-turned-theatrical-distributor behind Cabrini and Sound of Freedom.

And now, a few more stats and facts re: this week’s top ten, title by title: