Summary

• The Mad Max franchise has always had niche appeal; it's not a huge box office draw like Marvel or Star Wars.
• Movie prequels often bomb at the box office due to their predetermined ending and lack of compelling storytelling.
• Furiosa struggled to appeal to all four quadrants and relied on word-of-mouth.

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga has been met with universally positive reviews from critics and good word-of-mouth from audiences – so why is it performing so badly at the box office? Set a couple of decades before the events of Mad Max: Fury Road, Furiosa fills in the backstory of its titular character, previously played by Charlize Theron but played here by Anya Taylor-Joy. The film follows Furiosa’s crusade to avenge her late mother, who was killed by a sadistic warlord.

With George Miller back in the director’s chair, Furiosa delivers on the high-octane action spectacle it promises – but its box office performance has yet to match its positive critical reception. Furiosa’s disappointing opening weekend yielded a return of just $64-66 million, which is a long way from topping its whopping production budget of $168 million. There are a few reasons for Furiosa’s underwhelming commercial performance.

10 The Mad Max Franchise Has Never Been A Truly Huge Box Office Draw

Why The Mad Max Franchise Isn't A Guaranteed Box Office Hit

Unlike Star Wars or the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which have broken a laundry list of box office records during their historic run, the Mad Max series has never been a massive box office draw. The first movie set a Guinness world record for most profitable film ever made, but that’s only because it was produced on a shoestring budget and has enjoyed a cult following in the decades since its release. Mad Max is a popular franchise with a dedicated fan base, but it’s always had more niche appeal than the average action movie series.

Furiosa has a similarly huge budget and it’s arriving in a much more precarious filmgoing landscape.

Warner Bros. got lucky with the blockbuster box office run of Mad Max: Fury Road, but even then, it barely made a profit on its bloated budget. Furiosa has a similarly huge budget and it’s arriving in a much more precarious filmgoing landscape. Even at the best of times, Furiosa might not have been a big moneymaker.

9 Movie Prequels Often Underperform At The Box Office

How Movie Backstories Struggle to Find an Audience

From Solo: A Star Wars Story to The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, movie prequels have been known to underperform at the box office. The storied history of a world like Star Wars or The Hunger Games or, indeed, Mad Max, might seem like a big, untapped well of content to a studio that owns the I.P., but prequel stories are rarely compelling, because the ending is predetermined. Anyone who’s seen Mad Max: Fury Road knows exactly how Furiosa will end.

Not every prequel has bombed at the box office. The Star Wars prequel trilogy did really well in spite of its mixed reviews, and Monsters University outgrossed its predecessor. But there are a lot more prequels that bomb than succeed, because they’re usually not stories that need to be told (e.g. Han Solo’s origin story).

8 Furiosa Isn’t A Four-Quadrant Movie

Beyond Demographics: Why Furiosa Missed the "Four-Quadrant" Mark

In Hollywood, the most prized type of movie is a four-quadrant movie. A four-quadrant movie is a movie that appeals to the four major audience demographics: males under 25, females under 25, males over 25, and females over 25. Despite having a strong female protagonist, Furiosa only really appealed to male audiences. Furiosa’s opening-weekend viewership was made up of mostly male moviegoers – 72% to be exact – and 55% of audience were between the ages of 18 and 34 (via Deadline).

To make the kind of money that Furiosa would need to turn a profit, it needed to appeal to as many audience as possible.

Furiosa might be underperforming at the box office because it only appeals to half of the four quadrants. To make the kind of money that Furiosa would need to turn a profit, it needed to appeal to as many audience as possible. By cutting its potential viewership in half, Furiosa shot itself in the foot.

7 Mad Max: Fury Road Came Out 9 Years Ago

The Long Shadow of Mad Max: Fury Road

When Mad Max: Fury Road hit theaters in 2015, it was instantly praised as one of the greatest action movies ever made and brought a whole new generation of fans to the Mad Max franchise. But it took almost a decade for Warner Bros. to release another Mad Max film. Strategizing sequels is a tough business, but it generally works better if the studio strikes while the iron is hot. If they have a hit movie like Fury Road, they need to get the follow-up into theaters within the next three or four years.

Waiting nine years to release another Mad Max movie after Fury Road has undoubtedly affected its box office performance. In the first year or so after Fury Road, audiences were champing at the bit for more Mad Max. But in 2024, it seems that those fans have moved on.

6 Furiosa’s Stars Aren’t Necessarily A Box Office Draw

Why Furiosa's Cast Didn't Guarantee Success

Furiosa has two famous, recognizable actors in its lead roles: Anya Taylor-Joy as Furiosa herself and Chris Hemsworth as the film’s eccentric villain, Dementus. There’s no denying that Taylor-Joy and Hemsworth are great actors who each give a terrific performance in the film. But are either of them really a box office draw in the way that Timothée Chalamet or Sydney Sweeney are?

Taylor-Joy made her name in dark, low-budget fare like The Witch, Split, and Thoroughbreds. Her bigger-budget movies, like The Northman and Last Night in Soho, have bombed at the box office. Hemsworth, on the other hand, has headlined blockbusters in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but the star of those movies is really Thor. It’s not Hemsworth’s star power that sells those movies; it’s the popularity of the Thor character. Furiosa didn’t really have much star power to capitalize on.

5 Furiosa Is The Kind Of Movie That Relies On Good Word-Of-Mouth

Why Furiosa Needed Buzz to Build

With its gonzo visual style and its attachment to a niche franchise, Furiosa is the kind of movie that relies on good word-of-mouth. Movies from franchises like the MCU and Fast & Furious tend to have a very top-heavy box office performance, because the existing fan base will buy tickets to see the film as early as possible on the opening weekend. Whether those movies have legs after an impressive opening weekend depends on whether those fans enjoyed it enough to recommend it to their friends.

Furiosa is too strange to have that kind of instant blockbuster success. But it is a really good movie, so viewers who have seen it will tell their friends to check it out. This word-of-mouth is crucial to a film like Furiosa’s success. It may have underperformed on its opening weekend, but it just might leg it out to a respectable profit in the coming weeks.

4 Furiosa Had To Compete With Garfield

An Unexpected Rival

While Furiosa was underperforming at the box office, The Garfield Movie was enjoying commercial success on the same weekend. The Garfield Movie’s success can partly be attributed to its much more reasonable budget, meaning it had to gross a lot less than Furiosa to be considered a hit. But it also had a wider appeal than Furiosa. As an R-rated car chase movie, Furiosa only appealed to fans of the action genre over the age of 17.

As a family-friendly comedy about an iconic talking cat, The Garfield Movie appealed to everyone. On the weekend of May 24, parents could either fork out for a babysitter and watch Furiosa without their kids, or take their kids to the theater with them and watch The Garfield Movie. Based on the numbers, it looks like most of them chose the latter.

3 Audiences Know Furiosa Probably Won't Take That Long To Release On VOD

The Streaming Threat to Box Office Performance

It used to be that a new tentpole movie wouldn’t be available for at-home viewing until months after its initial release. But in recent years, audiences have gotten used to movies arriving on streaming platforms shortly after their theatrical release. Furiosa’s streaming release is unconfirmed as of yet, but The Fall Guy jumped from theaters to streaming in just under three weeks. Audiences have become conditioned to wait.

This isn’t just a problem for Furiosa – it’s become an industry-wide concern – but it’s particularly prevalent for Warner Bros. properties. Ever since Warners adopted a day-and-date release strategy for a bunch of its post-COVID movies, it’s seemed as though the studio is more concerned with padding out its streaming platform with lucrative content than turning a profit in the theatrical market. Why go to a theater to see Furiosa when it’ll probably be on VOD in less than a month?

2 The Popularity Of Furiosa Was Based More On Charlize Theron's Performance Than The Actual Character

Why Furiosa Wasn't Just About the Actress

It was a wise move to make a Furiosa-centric spin-off after Mad Max: Fury Road, since Furiosa stole the show from Max in Fury Road. But Furiosa’s popularity was based less on the character herself and more on Charlize Theron’s ferocious, nuanced performance as the post-apocalyptic warrior. The Furiosa movie relies on the Furiosa character herself, played by a younger actor in her origin story.

Anya Taylor-Joy is a fine actor and a popular up-and-coming star, but she’s not the Furiosa that audiences fell in love with.

If Warners had made a Furiosa spin-off with Theron playing the older Furiosa seen in Fury Road, then it might’ve had a better chance at box office success. Taylor-Joy playing Furiosa is like Alden Ehrenreich playing Han Solo. Even if they do a good job, it doesn’t feel right.

1 Furiosa's Box Office Struggles Are Bigger Than Just The Mad Max Prequel

A Wider Trend: Furiosa's Struggles Reflect a Changing Movie Market

Furiosa’s box office underperformance isn’t an isolated incident. Box office receipts have been drastically down in general. Madame Web, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, Arthur the King, The Fall Guy, IF, and many more big-budget, star-studded studio movies have bombed in 2024. There are a few reasons for this: casual moviegoers would rather watch movies at home than go out to a theater; audiences have become disillusioned with the glut of sequels and reboots; budgets have gotten ridiculously inflated post-COVID, making the threshold of profitability higher and higher.

The box office failure of Furiosa is a symptom of an industry-wide problem. It’s not the only big-budget tentpole movie to bomb at the box office this year, and it probably won’t be the last. Even positive reviews and recognizable franchises can’t guarantee a movie’s success in this brave new world.

Source: Deadline