Box Office: ‘Garfield’ Wins Sluggish Weekend With $14M as ‘Furiosa’ Runs Out of Gas

Pamela McClintock

2 June 2024 at 11:06 am·4-min read

It’s another bummer of a weekend at the summer of box office, where overall domestic revenue looks to be down 69 percent — no, not a typo — from a year ago as Hollywood and theater owners continue to grapple with a lack of big event pics. And year-to-date revenue is now down 24 percent over last year.

For some, there is reason to smile. Alcon and Sony’s The Garfield Movie easily purred past George Miller’s Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga to top the weekend chart with an estimated $14 million for a domestic tally of $51.6 million. Alcon fully financed the $60 million film, which crossed the $100 million mark overseas for a global tally of $152.2 million.

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Furiosa, costing a pricey $168 million to produce, fell a steep 59 percent to $10.8 million, dashing hopes that it could rebound after a disappointing Memorial Day opening. The dystopian epic is also stalling overseas, where it took in only $21 million from 77 markets for a global total of $114.4 million ($49.7 million domestic, $64.7 million international). No one would have expected Garfield to earn more than Furiosa this weekend internationally, with $27 million from 60 markets.

Compounding Furiosa‘s woes, the film almost got edged out by John Krasinski’s original family film IF, now in its third weekend. The Ryan Reynolds-starrer is enjoying strong staying power, and grossed another $10.5 million domestically for a North American tally of $80.1 million and $135 million worldwide, according to final weekend numbers from Comscore.

20th Century and Disney’s The Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes placed No. 4 domestically with $8.8 million while earning another $15.2 million from 52 markets overseas to rank as the top-grossing summer title to date with $337.1 million in worldwide ticket sales. Domestically, the newest installment in the long-running franchise has grossed $140 million and is on the verge of passing up the $147 million earned by 2017’s War for the Planet of the Apes.

The Fall Guy remained in the upper reaches of the chart despite now being available on premium VOD. The Ryan Gosling-Emily Blunt action comedy grossed $4.2 million to place No. 5. The movie’s global tally is $157.9 million.

Lionsgate’s The Strangers: Chapter 1 is also still scaring up business. The $8.5 million pic, coming in No. 6, earned $3.6 million for a domestic tally of $28.4 million.

Crunchyroll and Sony’s anime sports film Haikyu!! The Dumpster Battle placed No. 7 with an estimated opening of $3.5 million from 1,125 theaters.

The Japanese film was among several new movies opening moderately wide in hopes of taking advantage of the slowdown in big studio event tiles.

IFC opened In a Violent Storm in 1,426 cinemas, its widest release ever. Violent Storm came in No. 8 with an estimated $2 million, followed by Bleecker Street’s Ezra with $1.2 million from 1,325 locations. Roadside Attraction’s Summer Camp, targeting older adults with stars including Diane Keaton, Kathy Bates and Alfre Woodard, rounded out the top 10 with a disappointing $1 million.

At the specialty box office, Jerry Bruckheimer and Disney released the biographical drama Young Woman and the Sea, starring Daisy Ridley as the real-life young English woman who was famous for swimming the English Channel. The film, originally intended for Disney+, is playing in roughly 250 theaters and is expected to take in $500,000 or thereabouts. The studio isn’t reporting numbers since the theatrical component was intended to qualify the film for awards.

A year ago on this same weekend, Sony’s Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse opened worldwide to $208.6 million. This, in part, explains why this weekend’s combined revenue of $60 million is down a steep 69 percent from the same frame last year.

June 2, 7:25 a.m. Updated with revised weekend estimates.
June 2, 2:00 p.m.: Updated with numbers for The Strangers: Chapter 1, which placed No. 6.
June 3, 3:05 p.m.: Updated with final numbers for the weekend, which showed Furiosa coming in narrowly ahead of IF (Sunday estimates showed the reverse).

This story was originally published June 1 at 10:23 a.m..

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