US box office revenue is down 36% on last year’s Memorial Day weekend, as the two leading films take only around $30m each
Neither a fat cat nor a ravening pack of post-apocalyptic Australian warlords could save US cinemas from their worst performance over the Memorial Day weekend in nearly three decades.to the top spot, taking $32m over the four days, compared with Garfield’s $31.1m . Ghostly animation Casper took $22m over the same period in 1995, but ever since then receipts have been up – excluding in 2020, when cinemas were entirely closed due to Covid.
The softness of both new movies’ opening weekend has come as a shock to the beleaguered industry, which is still reeling from the underperformance of films such asFuriosa, whose budget has been estimated at $168m , had been expected to open with around $40-45m , around the same as the previous instalment, which debuted on a normal weekend in the US, rather than over a holiday period, ahead of a final total of $380m globally.
Sequel fatigue has been credited for the disappointing takings, as well as the fact original stars Charlize Theron and Tom Hardy didn’t return. Garfield is better placed: the Chris Pratt-voiced animation has already made back half of its budget in the US alone. This is the first year since 2009 when a Marvel movie hasn’t kicked off the early summer period; cinemagoers will have to wait until much later in the season for the first superhero offering to appear. Even then, younger punters will be excluded as Deadpool & Wolverine carries an R-rating in the US.
Hopes are increasingly resting on children’s sequels Inside Out 2 and Despicable Me 4 to winch the summer box office out of its doldrums, before adult-oriented sequels to Joker, Gladiator and Venom arrive later in the year.
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