Memorial Day weekend is usually a big one for moviegoers and Hollywood, but this year’s numbers show otherwise.
Warner Bros.’ “Furiosa” edged out Sony’s “The Garfield Movie” with just $32 million domestically to take the top spot for the four-day weekend, according to estimates from Comscore. Final results will be released this week.
Now the heat is on for Hollywood to deliver the rest of summer movie season.
“Furiosa” was the lowest-grossing No. 1 film at the Memorial Day box office since 1995’s “Casper,” leaving out 2020, when Covid shut down theaters and halted production. (Leaving out 2020 and 2021, it was also the worst overall Memorial Day weekend for Hollywood since 1995.)
Last year, Disney‘s live-action version of “The Little Mermaid” opened to $118 million domestically over the holiday. And the year before that, Paramount’s “Top Gun: Maverick” launched with $160 million over Memorial Day weekend on its way to a total domestic gross of over $700 million.
This year, though, the holiday frame came with several issues, Comscore senior analyst Paul Dergarabedian told NBC News on Monday.
“This was indeed a historically slow Memorial Day weekend for movie theaters,” Dergarabedian said. “But this outcome was the result of many factors, including a disruption of the release dates for many films as a result of the Hollywood strikes,” as well as “a lack of a first-quarter blockbuster holdover.”
He also noted that no movie so far this year has opened with a $100 million weekend, which became common in the age of comic book blockbusters.
Last year’s strikes, which shut down production for several months, caused studios to delay some tentpole films. For instance, Paramount‘s eighth “Mission: Impossible” movie was once scheduled for next month, but it’s now hitting theaters next year. Disney’s “Lion King” prequel, “Mufasa,” will come out in December instead of during the summer, as originally planned. The movie industry is expected to return to a more normal schedule next year.
This Memorial Day weekend also didn’t have a Marvel movie paving the way for other movies to do big business. For over a decade, the effects-laden comic book films have generally kicked off the unofficial summer movie season with big spring releases. Last year, “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3” cleared $118 million domestically in its early May opening weekend.
This year, though, Universal’s “The Fall Guy” and Paramount’s “IF” got things started on an underwhelming note. Each has brought in less than $100 million domestically.
Experts say this summer’s total ticket sales could barely cross the $3 billion mark, compared with last summer’s $4.1 billion domestic haul, driven in large part by “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer,” dubbed “Barbenheimer” by fans. Those films opened on the same weekend in July and went on to make hundreds of millions of dollars each.
This summer does, however, offer some potential hits. “Despicable Me 4” (July 5), from Universal, which shares a parent company with NBC; Universal and Warner Bros.’ “Twisters” (July 19); and Disney’s “Inside Out 2” (June 14) and “Deadpool and Wolverine” (July 26) are all expected to lure big audiences.
Those releases, Dergarabedian said, “will allow the industry to hit the reset and get the industry moving in a positive direction.”
