Memorial Day box office showing softest since the 1990s

Hollywood’s hopes for a hot start to the summer at the box office fizzled out Monday, with Memorial Day long weekend movie ticket sales poised to be the softest in almost three decades.

Warner Bros.’s Furiosa beat out Sony’s Columbia Pictures and Alcon Entertainment’s The Garfield Movie, according to Comscore data. But the Mad Max prequel’s $32 million domestic opening weekend was the Memorial Day weekend’s worst No. 1 performance since 1995’s Casper, with $22.5 million, not adjusted for inflation and excluding 2020, when theaters were closed because of the COVID-19 pandemic.