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‘Furiosa,’ ‘Garfield’ Lead Slowest Memorial Day Box Office in Decades

Cast member Anya Taylor-Joy attends the UK premiere of "Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga" in London, Britain, May 17, 2024. (Reuters)
Cast member Anya Taylor-Joy attends the UK premiere of "Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga" in London, Britain, May 17, 2024. (Reuters)
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‘Furiosa,’ ‘Garfield’ Lead Slowest Memorial Day Box Office in Decades

Cast member Anya Taylor-Joy attends the UK premiere of "Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga" in London, Britain, May 17, 2024. (Reuters)
Cast member Anya Taylor-Joy attends the UK premiere of "Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga" in London, Britain, May 17, 2024. (Reuters)

Movie theaters are looking more and more like a wasteland this summer. Neither “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” nor “The Garfield Movie” could save Memorial Day weekend, which is cruising towards a two-decade low.

“Furiosa,” the Mad Max prequel starring Anya Taylor-Joy and Chris Hemsworth, claimed the first place spot for the Friday-Saturday-Sunday weekend with $25.6 million, according to studio estimates on Sunday. Warner Bros. is waiting until Monday to release its four-day estimates.

“The Garfield Movie,” animated and family-friendly, was the other big new offering this weekend from Sony’s Columbia Pictures and Alcon Entertainment. It is claiming No. 1 for the four-day holiday weekend with an estimated $31.9 million in ticket sales through Memorial Day. Sony estimates its three-day earnings to be $24.8 million.

Aside from Memorial Day in 2020 when theaters were closed due to COVID-19, these are the lowest earning No. 1 movies in 29 years, since “Casper” earned $22.5 million (not adjusted for inflation) in its first four days in 1995. Big earners are more typical for the holiday weekend, which has had ten movies crack $100 million, led by “Top Gun: Maverick’s” record-setting $160 million launch in 2022.

Last year, the live-action “The Little Mermaid” joined the group with a $118 million debut. Audiences even turned out in greater numbers over the pandemic-addled weekend in 2021 for “A Quiet Place Part II,” which made over $57 million.

“Furiosa” was never expected to join the $100 million opener club, which Warner Bros. released on 3,804 screens in the US and Canada. But it was supposed to have a slightly stronger showing in the $40 million range over its first four days. That would have been more in line with its predecessor, “Mad Max: Fury Road,” which opened to $45.4 million in May 2015. “Fury Road,” starring Charlize Theron and Tom Hardy, went on to gross nearly $380 million worldwide.

This new origin story in which Taylor-Joy plays a younger version of Theron’s character had a lot of things going for it, too, including strong reviews out of the just-wrapped Cannes Film Festival (it has an 89% on Rotten Tomatoes) and a splashy international press tour with many buzzy premiere looks from Taylor-Joy. With a reported $168 million production budget, not accounting for marketing and promotion, “Furiosa” has a long road to profitability.

“The Garfield Movie,” meanwhile, was more modestly budgeted, at a reported $60 million. Chris Pratt voices the lasagna-loving, Monday-hating orange cat in the movie that got scathing reviews from critics (it has a 37% on Rotten Tomatoes). Audiences meanwhile gave both “Furiosa” and “The Garfield Movie” a B+ CinemaScore and 4.5 stars out of 5 on PostTrak.

In its second weekend, John Krasinski’s “IF” fell 53%, adding $16 million through Sunday and $20.7 million through Monday, bringing its domestic total to $63.3 million. Worldwide, it has surpassed $100 million. “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes,” now in its third weekend, added $13.4 million through Sunday, bringing its global total to $294.8 million, making it the fourth-highest grossing film of the year.

Earlier this week, the industry trade The Hollywood Reporter asked “what happened to the $100 million opener?” Notably, 2023 has had none yet. The biggest of the year was “Dune: Part Two,” which opened to $82.5 million and went on to earn over $711 million worldwide.

The lack of a recent runaway hit just puts more pressure on the upcoming films to make up the slack. Still on the way are a slew of potential blockbusters like Paramount’s “A Quiet Place: Day One” (June 27), Universal’s “Despicable Me 4” (July 3) and “Twisters” (July 19) and two heavy-hitters from Disney: “Inside Out 2” (June 14) and “Deadpool & Wolverine” (July 26).

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The Music Industry is Battling AI -- with Limited Success

The music industry is particularly concerned about non-authorized use of its content to train generative AI models. LLUIS GENE / AFP
The music industry is particularly concerned about non-authorized use of its content to train generative AI models. LLUIS GENE / AFP
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The Music Industry is Battling AI -- with Limited Success

The music industry is particularly concerned about non-authorized use of its content to train generative AI models. LLUIS GENE / AFP
The music industry is particularly concerned about non-authorized use of its content to train generative AI models. LLUIS GENE / AFP

The music industry is fighting on platforms, through the courts and with legislators in a bid to prevent the theft and misuse of art from generative AI -- but it remains an uphill battle.

Sony Music said recently it has already demanded that 75,000 deepfakes -- simulated images, tunes or videos that can easily be mistaken for real -- be rooted out, a figure reflecting the magnitude of the issue.

The information security company Pindrop says AI-generated music has "telltale signs" and is easy to detect, yet such music seems to be everywhere.

"Even when it sounds realistic, AI-generated songs often have subtle irregularities in frequency variation, rhythm and digital patterns that aren't present in human performances," said Pindrop, which specializes in voice analysis.

But it takes mere minutes on YouTube or Spotify -- two top music-streaming platforms -- to spot a fake rap from 2Pac about pizzas, or an Ariana Grande cover of a K-pop track that she never performed.

"We take that really seriously, and we're trying to work on new tools in that space to make that even better," said Sam Duboff, Spotify's lead on policy organization.

YouTube said it is "refining" its own ability to spot AI dupes, and could announce results in the coming weeks.

"The bad actors were a little bit more aware sooner," leaving artists, labels and others in the music business "operating from a position of reactivity," said Jeremy Goldman, an analyst at the company Emarketer.

"YouTube, with a multiple of billions of dollars per year, has a strong vested interest to solve this," Goldman said, adding that he trusts they're working seriously to fix it.

"You don't want the platform itself, if you're at YouTube, to devolve into, like, an AI nightmare," he said.

Litigation

But beyond deepfakes, the music industry is particularly concerned about unauthorized use of its content to train generative AI models like Suno, Udio or Mubert.

Several major labels filed a lawsuit last year at a federal court in New York against the parent company of Udio, accusing it of developing its technology with "copyrighted sound recordings for the ultimate purpose of poaching the listeners, fans and potential licensees of the sound recordings it copied."

More than nine months later, proceedings have yet to begin in earnest. The same is true for a similar case against Suno, filed in Massachusetts.

At the center of the litigation is the principle of fair use, allowing limited use of some copyrighted material without advance permission. It could limit the application of intellectual property rights.

"It's an area of genuine uncertainty," said Joseph Fishman, a law professor at Vanderbilt University.

Any initial rulings won't necessarily prove decisive, as varying opinions from different courts could punt the issue to the Supreme Court.

In the meantime, the major players involved in AI-generated music continue to train their models on copyrighted work -- raising the question of whether the battle isn't already lost.

Fishman said it may be too soon to say that: although many models are already training on protected material, new versions of those models are released continuously, and it's unclear whether any court decisions would create licensing issues for those models going forward.

Deregulation

When it comes to the legislative arena, labels, artists and producers have found little success.

Several bills have been introduced in the US Congress, but nothing concrete has resulted.

A few states -- notably Tennessee, home to much of the powerful country music industry -- have adopted protective legislation, notably when it comes to deepfakes.

Donald Trump poses another potential roadblock: the Republican president has postured himself as a champion of deregulation, particularly of AI.

Several giants in AI have jumped into the ring, notably Meta, which has urged the administration to "clarify that the use of publicly available data to train models is unequivocally fair use."

If Trump's White House takes that advice, it could push the balance against music professionals, even if the courts theoretically have the last word.

The landscape is hardly better in Britain, where the Labor government is considering overhauling the law to allow AI companies to use creators' content on the internet to help develop their models, unless rights holders opt out.

More than a thousand musicians, including Kate Bush and Annie Lennox, released an album in February entitled "Is This What We Want?" -- featuring the sound of silence recorded in several studios -- to protest those efforts.

For analyst Goldman, AI is likely to continue plaguing the music industry -- as long as it remains unorganized.

"The music industry is so fragmented," he said. "I think that that winds up doing it a disservice in terms of solving this thing."