Anya Taylor-Joy rode home on VOD last week with Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga and the results thus far are all shiny and chrome. The latest adventure in George Miller’s cinematic wasteland topped the iTunes VOD chart for July 1 and similarly lorded over the competition on the Fandango at Home chart for June 24 through 30. It’s a slight bit of redemption for the critically acclaimed blockbuster actioner after it fell surprisingly flat at the box office with only $171.3 million globally against an estimated $168 million budget. Previously, the top spot on both charts had been held by John Krasinski’s family comedy IF.
iTunes and Fandango both utilize different measures for their respective charts, meaning Furiosa dominated both in terms of the number of transactions and total revenue. Audiences are clearly still interested in seeing how Imperator Furiosa became the powerful leader seen in Mad Max: Fury Road, even if many didn’t show up when the film graced theaters in late May. It seemingly marks the continuation of a trend that has troubled the industry of late, as viewers have shown they’re more than willing to wait for the relatively quick turnaround of digital releases rather than go out to see movies on the biggest screen possible with some exceptions. David Leitch’s The Fall Guy similarly struggled at the box office with a starry duo of Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt failing to draw crowds until its VOD release.
I guess there’s something crude and fierce about Mad Max 1 that I find really endearing. Maybe it’s not a good film, but it’s got an enormous amount of heart. You can tell Miller was gonna be big from the first :)
When only the first three existed, which was true for my whole childhood, Thunderdome felt like too big a departure from the grit and grime of the first two. It felt sort of overinflated and a camp.