Garfield & Furiosa’s Week 2 Box Office Race Is Tight As Mad Max Prequel Survives Dip

The Garfield Movie is pulling ahead of Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga as their neck-and-neck box office race continues. The former’s domestic opening and the latter’s worldwide opening took place over Memorial Day, which led to a neck-and-neck race for box office dominance during the three-day holiday weekend. Eventually, the Furiosa box office took No. 1 with a 4-day total of $32.3 million, trailed by Garfield at $31.3 million, but it was too close to call until Monday, an unusually tight race for a modern domestic box office weekend.

Per Deadline, as of Saturday The Garfield Movie is projected to close out its second weekend in domestic theaters with a 3-day total of $13 million. Although both titles are still performing similarly, it has pulled ahead of Furiosa, which is currently projected to take No. 2 with $11.5 million. This marks a 56% drop for Furiosa, which is reasonably solid for a major blockbuster in week 2, though Garfield‘s much slimmer 45% drop is what has caused this discrepancy between the titles.

Which Movie Is Doing Better, Furiosa Or Garfield?

Both Movies Have Different Box Office Targets

Although The Garfield Movie is pulling ahead of the Furiosa release, it remains to be seen if either movie can ultimately be considered a hit by the end of their runs. This will ultimately depend on their overall worldwide totals and their production budgets. Because theaters keep half of ticket sales, generally a movie’s break-even point is at least twice its production budget, though that number doesn’t account for marketing costs. Below, see how close both movies’ cumulative domestic totals (using the Saturday projections) have come to hitting that point so far:

Although the weekend’s numbers for international markets won’t come in until later in the weekend, the Garfield release has been playing overseas since the beginning of May, earning an international gross of $66.6 million before its second domestic weekend. Furiosa, which opened worldwide over Memorial Day weekend, has so far only earned $32.8 million internationally. With those confirmed numbers, neither title has hit their break even point yet, though it seems more or less inevitable that Garfield‘s incoming international weekend will push it past $120 million worldwide, given that it only needs to close a gap of $2.6 million.

The fact that both movies had such lukewarm domestic week 2 performances in a weekend with no major competitive new wide releases likely isn’t a great sign for their continued domestic performance throughout the summer. However, if The Garfield Movie maintains a consistent week-over-week hold, it will very likely zoom toward becoming a solid hit in short order. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, on the other hand, has a much longer journey ahead of it considering its enormous budget.

Source: Deadline

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  Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

  A prequel to Mad Max: Fury Road, Furiosa is an action-adventure film that tells the origin story of the headstrong and fearless Furiosa. Set shortly after the beginning of the “end of the world,” Furiosa is kidnapped and brought before a powerful warlord, now forced to work for him. To find her way back home, Furiosa will adapt to the new harsh and arid world as she grows into the Furiosa she becomes known to be. 

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  The Garfield Movie

  Based on Jim Davis’s comic series, Garfield is a new imagining of the lasagna-loving cat and his friends, opting for a fully computer-animated approach. Chris Pratt voices the titular cat, with the film aiming to explore his early days and new misadventures for him, his friends, and his family.