Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is a 2024 post-apocalyptic action film directed and produced by George Miller, who wrote the screenplay with Nico Lathouris. It is the fifth installment in Miller's Mad Max franchise, and the first not focused on series protagonist Max Rockatansky, instead acting as both a spin-off prequel to Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) and an origin story for the Fury Road character Furiosa, portrayed by Anya Taylor-Joy and Alyla Browne in the prequel.

Set 15 to 20 years before the events of Fury Road, the film follows the title character's life for over a decade, from her kidnapping by the forces of warlord Dementus (Chris Hemsworth) to her ascension to the rank of Imperator. Tom Burke also stars as Praetorian Jack, a military commander who befriends Furiosa.

Several Fury Road cast members return in supporting roles, including John Howard, Nathan Jones, and Angus Sampson reprising their characters. Miller initially intended to shoot Furiosa back-to-back with Fury Road, but the former spent several years in development hell amidst salary disputes with Warner Bros. Pictures, Fury Road's distributor. Several crew members from Fury Road returned for Furiosa, including Lathouris, producer Doug Mitchell, composer Tom Holkenborg, costume designer Jenny Beavan and editor Margaret Sixel (Miller's wife). Filming took place in Australia from June to October 2022.

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga premiered at the 77th Cannes Film Festival on 15 May 2024. It was released theatrically in Australia on 23 May 2024 and in the United States the following day. The film received positive reviews from critics, but became a box-office bomb, grossing $172.8 million against its budget of $168 million. Multiple sources:

Plot
Decades after the apocalypse, Australia is a radioactive wasteland and the Green Place of Many Mothers is one of the last remaining areas with fresh water and agriculture. Raiders discover the Green Place while two children, Furiosa and Valkyrie, are picking peaches. Furiosa tries to sabotage their motorcycles, but the raiders capture her as a prize for their leader, Dementus of the Biker Horde.

Mary, Furiosa's mother, pursues them to the Horde's camp, killing all but one of the raiders, who brings Furiosa to Dementus. Furiosa mortally wounds the last raider before he can reveal the Green Place's location. Mary sneaks into the camp and rescues Furiosa, but Dementus tracks them down. The mother stays back to buy Furiosa time to escape and gives her a peach pit to remember her by, but Furiosa refuses to leave Mary. Dementus forces Furiosa to watch her mother's crucifixion. Haunted by his family's death, Dementus adopts an unwilling Furiosa as his daughter, hoping she will lead him to the Green Place.

Sometime after, Dementus besieges the Citadel, another settlement with fresh water and agriculture. However, the Horde is repelled by the War Boys, the fanatical army of Citadel warlord Immortan Joe. Dementus changes course, using a Trojan Horse strategy to capture Gastown, an oil refinery that supplies the Citadel with gasoline. At peace negotiations, Joe recognizes Dementus's authority over Gastown and increases its supplies of food and water in exchange for the Horde's physician and Furiosa, who has tattooed a star chart to the Green Place on her left arm to find her way home. Afterward, Joe imprisons Furiosa with his stable of "wives" inside a vault. After Joe's son, Rictus, shows an attraction towards her, Furiosa devises a plan to escape. One night, Rictus breaks Furiosa out of Joe's vault to rape her, but she slips from his grasp using a wig made from her own hair and disappears.

Disguised as a mute teenage boy, Furiosa works her way up the ranks of Joe's men for over a decade. She helps build the "War Rig", a heavily armed supply tanker that can withstand raider attacks in the lawless Wasteland. She plans to escape by hiding on the Rig when Joe sends his top driver, Praetorian Jack, on a supply run. Disillusioned by Dementus's callousness, his lieutenant, The Octoboss, goes rogue and launches an air assault on the Rig. His Mortifiers slaughter the Rig's entire crew and destroy Furiosa's hidden motorcycle, but Furiosa and Jack team up to defeat them. Furiosa tries to carjack the Rig and drive home, but Jack easily thwarts her. However, he recognizes her potential and offers to train her to escape if she helps him rebuild his crew; Furiosa becomes Jack's second-in-command and is promoted to Praetorian. She and Jack bond, and resolve to escape together. They see an opportunity when Joe decides to attack Gastown, which Dementus has mismanaged to near-ruin. Joe orders Furiosa and Jack to collect weapons and ammunition from the Bullet Farm, an allied mining facility.

However, Dementus ambushes them when they arrive. Furiosa and Jack barely escape, and Furiosa's left arm is injured. Dementus chases them down and tortures Jack to death. Furiosa escapes her chains by severing her own injured arm, sacrificing her star map to escape. A lone man watches from afar as Furiosa struggles back to the Citadel, where she and Joe's aide, The People Eater, form a strategy to avoid a trap planned by Dementus. Instead, Dementus himself is lured into a trap at the Citadel, and the War Boys crush the Horde in a 40-day war. Having lost her path home, Furiosa shaves her head again, replaces her arm with a mechanical prosthetic, and pursues the fleeing Dementus.

After an extended chase, Furiosa subdues Dementus in the desert. Furiosa imprisons Dementus at the Citadel and uses his living body as fertilizer to grow a peach tree from her mother's seed. Joe promotes Furiosa to "Imperator" and gives her command of a new War Rig. She meets Joe's five breeder wives in the vault where Joe once held her prisoner. The night before another supply run, the "Five Wives" hide in Furiosa's Rig.

Cast

 * Anya Taylor-Joy as Furiosa
 * Alyla Browne portrays Furiosa as a child and teenager
 * Archive footage of Charlize Theron as the older Furiosa from Mad Max: Fury Road is used during the final scene and end credits
 * Chris Hemsworth as Dementus, the deranged warlord leader of the Biker Horde, who abducted Furiosa, and eventual ruler of Gastown
 * Tom Burke as Praetorian Jack, the commander of the Citadel's first War Rig
 * Lachy Hulme as Immortan Joe, the warlord leader of the Citadel and enemy of the Biker Horde
 * Archive footage of Hugh Keays-Byrne as Immortan Joe from Mad Max: Fury Road is used during the end credits
 * Hulme also portrays Rizzdale Pell, Dementus' lieutenant
 * George Shevtsov as The History Man (the film's narrator), an expert in pre-apocalyptic history, science, and technology who serves Dementus
 * John Howard as The People Eater, Joe's advisor and military strategist, and the future ruler of Gastown in Mad Max: Fury Road
 * Angus Sampson as The Organic Mechanic, Dementus's and later Joe's personal physician
 * Nathan Jones as Rictus Erectus, Joe's muscular but dim-witted son
 * Josh Helman as Scrotus, Joe's psychologically unstable son
 * Charlee Fraser as Mary Jabassa, Furiosa's mother
 * Dylan Adonis as Valkyrie, Furiosa's childhood friend
 * Elsa Pataky as Mr. Norton, a deformed survivor who joins the Biker Horde
 * Pataky also portrays a Vuvalini General
 * Goran D. Kleut as The Octoboss, the leader of the Mortifiers biker gang, who begins the film as Dementus's temporary ally
 * David Collins as Smeg, Dementus's henchman, dance proclaimer, and messenger
 * Matuse as Fang, Dementus's henchman
 * Clarence Ryan as Black Thumb, Praetorian Jack's mechanic on the War Rig
 * Bryan Probets as Chumbucket, a hunchbacked auto mechanic at the Citadel
 * Quaden Bayles as War Pup
 * Lee Perry as The Bullet Farmer, ruler of the Bullet Farm and the Citadel's arms supplier
 * Archive footage of Richard Carter as The Bullet Farmer from Mad Max: Fury Road is used during the end credits
 * Daniel Webber as War Boy
 * Jacob Tomuri as Max Rockatansky, a loner living in his V8 Interceptor who witnesses Furiosa return to the Citadel; he later helps Furiosa and the "Five Wives" defeat Immortan Joe and his army, and claim control of the Citadel in Mad Max: Fury Road (Tomuri served as Tom Hardy's stunt double during the filming of Fury Road)
 * Archive footage of Hardy as Max from Mad Max: Fury Road is used during the end credits

Additionally, the end credits are intercut with archive footage from Mad Max: Fury Road, in which Nicholas Hoult, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Zoë Kravitz, Riley Keough, Abbey Lee, and Courtney Eaton appear as Nux, The Splendid Angharad, Toast the Knowing, Capable, The Dag, and Cheedo the Fragile, respectively; the latter five are also portrayed by stand-ins in silhouette during the film's final scene.

Pre-production


Director George Miller and co-writer Nico Lathouris spent over 15 years writing the script for Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), and developed backstories for every character, particularly co-protagonist Imperator Furiosa. They eventually wrote a Furiosa-centered screenplay, which actress Charlize Theron used as a reference for her performance in Fury Road. According to Miller, Furiosa "probably" takes place after Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985), but the Mad Max franchise has "no strict chronology". The first trailer of the film, released on 30 November 2023, stated that Furiosa takes place "45 years after the collapse".

In July 2010, Miller announced plans to shoot Fury Road back-to-back with a live-action prequel film entitled Mad Max: Furiosa, but, during pre-production, it was decided to only shoot Fury Road. At one point, Miller and Lathouris hoped to turn the Furiosa screenplay into an anime film directed by Mahiro Maeda, who had previously worked on The Animatrix (2003), Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995–96), and Porco Rosso (1992).

In November 2017, Miller's production company filed a lawsuit against Warner Bros. over a Fury Road salary dispute, which delayed the production of any additional entries in the franchise. In July 2019, Miller revealed that a Furiosa film was still being planned in addition to two Mad Max sequels.

By March 2020, Miller and Warner Bros. settled their lawsuit and began casting the Furiosa prequel, which Miller intended to make after Three Thousand Years of Longing (2022). It was reported that the film would take place over a timeframe of 15 years, depicting Furiosa's backstory of how she was displaced from her home and spent her life "trying to get back".

Multiple Fury Road crew members agreed to return for the film, including composer Tom Holkenborg, costume designer Jenny Beavan, editor Margaret Sixel, makeup designer Lesley Vanderwalt, production designer Colin Gibson (no relation to original Mad Max star Mel Gibson), and sound mixer Ben Osmo; Beavan, Sixel, Vanderwalt, Gibson, and Osmo had all previously won Academy Awards for their work on Fury Road. In 2020, Miller said that the semi-retired John Seale had agreed to return as cinematographer, but Seale retired after shooting Miller's Three Thousand Years of Longing, explaining that he wanted to spend more time with his grandchildren. Simon Duggan took over as Furiosa's cinematographer.

Village Roadshow Pictures, which had co-financed Fury Road, was credited in initial marketing material for Furiosa, with its involvement also acknowledged by an official press kit related to the film and a press release by the Cannes Film Festival. However, following its premiere, all mentions of the company were omitted from promotions and the film itself. In May 2024, a box-office report by Deadline Hollywood stated that Warner Bros. "is all in on Furiosa" and financed the bulk of the film's budget without co-financiers, such as Village Roadshow, most likely the result of a content dispute related to Warner Bros.' simultaneous release strategy followed in 2021. The online news site also reported that Domain Entertainment (a private equity fund that co-financed other Warner Bros. productions like Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom and Wonka in 2023) was listed in the opening credits after the Warner Bros. logo.

Casting
Miller sought to cast a younger actress for the role in lieu of using de-aging technology for Theron, explaining that the technology still leaves "an uncanny valley" effect. Theron admitted that the decision was "a little heartbreaking, for sure", but understood Miller's rationale. In March 2020, during the COVID-19 lockdown in Australia, Miller auditioned several actresses over Skype for the Furiosa role.

In October 2020, Anya Taylor-Joy, Chris Hemsworth, and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II were cast, although Abdul-Mateen later dropped out due to a scheduling conflict. Miller chose Taylor-Joy after seeing her performance in an early cut of the film Last Night in Soho (2021) and auditioning her with the "Mad as Hell" monologue, quoted by the character Howard Beale (portrayed by Peter Finch) from Sidney Lumet's Network (1976). Edgar Wright, the director of Last Night in Soho, told Miller to "do yourself a favor and grab the opportunity to work with her". Miller felt that "there's a kind of timelessness to her, there's a mystery to her, and yet she's accessible". Taylor-Joy received advice from Nicholas Hoult, who had previously portrayed Nux in Fury Road and worked alongside her in The Menu (2022). According to Goran D. Kleut, who portrayed The Octoboss, Miller asks every actor who auditions with him to try out the "Mad as Hell" monologue.

Hemsworth, an Australian, had grown up watching the Mad Max films. In 2010, he had previously applied for the title role in Fury Road that eventually went to Tom Hardy. Hemsworth later explained that he was not a big enough star at the time to earn the role; his most notable role, Thor, had not yet debuted in the 2011 film of the same name. To accurately portray resource scarcity in the wasteland, Hemsworth cut his calorie intake in half compared to when he prepares for an MCU film.

In 2021, Miller cast Alyla Browne as a young Furiosa; she had previously worked with Miller on Three Thousand Years of Longing. Miller said that she reminded him of a young Furiosa and that she impressed him while doing the splits on set. Tom Burke joined the cast in the autumn of 2021 as Praetorian Jack, replacing Abdul-Mateen. Burke said that while most of his scenes were shot sitting down in a truck, he had to spend long hours in the gym becoming "as lithe as possible", given that he might have to safely jump off the War Rig many times in a row until Miller got a take he was satisfied with.

When principal photography began in June 2022, the producers disclosed that Nathan Jones and Angus Sampson were set to reprise their roles from Fury Road. They additionally announced that Quaden Bayles, who worked on Three Thousand Years of Longing after a video about his mistreatment at school went viral, would appear in a minor role. During the production, Miller agreed to cast Lachy Hulme, who was already playing the role of Rizzdale Pell, as a younger Immortan Joe, succeeding Fury Road's late Hugh Keays-Byrne, who died in 2020. Miller initially wanted to use a body double for Joe and record his lines in post-production with ADR, but Hulme convinced Miller that he could replicate Keays-Byrne's voice and eyes. "When you are working on a Dr. George Miller movie, there's no pressure on you because you're in an incredibly supportive environment", Hulme said. During pre-production, Hulme fell off a motorcycle while practicing for a scene as Rizzdale Pell. Afterward, Miller decided all the actor's bike riding would be performed by his stunt double, Chris Matheson.

Filming
Filming took place in Australia from May to October 2022; principal photography began on 1 June 2022. Miller shot the film at various locations in New South Wales: Broken Hill/Silverton, Hay (the Stowaway action sequence), Kurnell (the Bullet Farm and the final confrontation between Furiosa and Dementus), Terrey Hills (the Green Place), Melrose Park (Gastown), and the Disney lot in Sydney (the Citadel). The action sequence where the raiders ambush the War Rig took 78 days to shoot, where close to 200 stunt performers worked on it every day; the sequence became known during production as "Stairway to Nowhere".

Miller stated that Furiosa was an easier shoot than Fury Road, alluding to the latter's troubled production, and complimented Warner Bros.' new leadership for implementing an "approach to filmmaking [that was] much more collaborative than it was adversarial". Burke said that Miller wanted a different kind of filming style from Fury Road, which used short takes and long cuts; he noted that Miller specifically wanted to shoot the scene where Dementus taunts Jack and Furiosa in one take.

Taylor-Joy praised Miller's commitment to safety on set, but said that working on the film was, nonetheless, a challenging experience. With just 30-odd spoken lines of dialogue, she would go "months" on the film's set without speaking a single word on camera: "I've never been more alone than making that movie ... I don't want to go too deep into it, but everything that I thought was going to be easy was hard." When asked what proved more difficult than she expected on the Furiosa set, the actress said: "Next question, sorry. Talk to me in 20 years."

Hemsworth arrived on set nursing a back injury, but said that he was excited to work on Furiosa because playing Dementus allowed him to get "out of that typecast space of the muscly action guy and ... play a character with complications and darkness". He explained that "suffering without a purpose is awful", but "suffering with purpose can be rejuvenating and replenishing". Burke said that Miller was willing to collaborate with his actors to structure Furiosa and Jack's relationship, explaining that while Miller wanted a romance, Burke felt the characters should "push romance to the side until they believe they are riding off to a safer place".

While promoting the film, the actors disclosed several ideas that Miller considered or even shot but ultimately cut. Taylor-Joy said that Miller shot but ultimately deleted a scene where Furiosa cuts off Dementus's tongue, an act which is mentioned but not shown in the theatrical version. Burke said that Miller vetoed the idea of a training montage where Jack teaches Furiosa about road war because it was too much of a cliché. On Facebook, Jones posted that he expects Miller will release a director's cut.

Post-production


Fury Road's VFX supervisor Andrew Jackson returned for Furiosa. His home studio DNEG worked with Framestore, Metaphysic.ai, Rising Sun Pictures, and slatevfx. He had received an Academy Award nomination for Fury Road and subsequently won the Oscar for Tenet (2020). Jackson said that Furiosa "leans much more heavily [than Fury Road] on visual effects" and that Miller "completely embraced the idea that CG is the way to go to build worlds and do whatever we need to do in post".

In addition to traditional CGI work, such as augmenting backdrops and stitching together the work of multiple stuntmen who shot their scenes separately for safety reasons, Jackson used VFX to heighten certain action scenes, such as the Stowaway action sequence, where VFX animated The Octoboss's demise and the final chase sequence, where a CGI version of Furiosa's (otherwise practical) car was used to animate "things just far too dangerous to be doing with a real car, like side-swiping motorbikes". VFX helped "generat[e] a feeling of movement" by making background elements move faster and animating flying equipment like The Octoboss's rippling black parachute.

As Furiosa ages from a child to a young woman over the course of the film, Miller and Jackson hired Rising Sun Pictures to use machine learning (a non-generative form of artificial intelligence) to blend Taylor-Joy's and Browne's faces together. Taylor-Joy said that Miller "wanted the transition ... to be seamless". She spent two days shooting with Rising Sun so that they could map her facial expressions. By her estimate, at the start of the film, about 35% of Browne's face was modified to look like her own, a figure that increased to 80% during Browne's final scenes in the Citadel.

Additionally, in Taylor-Joy's early scenes in the Citadel, her eyes were partially modified to look more like Browne's. Taylor-Joy stressed that the actors' union went on strike in part to demand better regulation of AI tools and that Miller's use of AI was consensual. Metaphysic.ai performed a similar function for the Bullet Farmer, blending Lee Perry's facial features with those of the late Richard Carter, who portrayed the Bullet Farmer in Fury Road.

Impact on the Australian film industry
According to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), Furiosa was the most expensive film in Australian history, with a budget of AU$333.2 million. Over 3,000 people worked on the film, including some ex-convicts who were hired as supporting artists. In addition, to take advantage of Australian tax credits for VFX work, DNEG opened a Sydney branch to spearhead special effects work on Furiosa; it estimated that the office, once fully staffed, would employ up to 500 VFX artists.

The film was awarded extensive government subsidies, including a filming incentive from the New South Wales government and various "offsets from the federal government". Miller said that government support "made [shooting in Australia] possible". Queensland University of Technology professor Amanda Lotz estimated that Screen NSW contributed AU$50 million in direct subsidies to Furiosa's budget. Furthermore, the federal government offers all qualifying films a tax rebate equivalent to 40% of the amount of money the production spends in Australia. Lotz estimated the federal rebate at AU$133 million (40% of AU$333.2 million), and NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian said that she hoped Furiosa would contribute AU$350 million to the Australian economy. Although a May 2024 ABC report estimated the size of the NSW filming incentive as AU$175 million (over half the film's reported budget), the ABC subsequently amended its report to remove that estimate. Other reports suggested that the AU$175 million figure applies to the total size of the NSW subsidy fund (spread out over five years) and not to Furiosa specifically.

Furiosa's VFX artists allowed Furiosa to keep shooting in Australia even though the weather in New South Wales was not ideal for a desert-based film. By contrast, Miller had to move the Fury Road shoot from Australia to Namibia because rain caused wildflowers to grow in the Australian desert, which would not have happened in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. According to Framestore, during the opening chase sequence where Mary tracks Furiosa's kidnappers through a series of sand dunes, "we ended up pretty much having to replace all of the ground". Colourist Eric Whipp, who also worked on Fury Road, said that because the desert scenes needed to look like Namibia and "there was a huge mix of sunny and cloudy days" during the shoot, "a lot of the backgrounds in this film are full CG".

Music
Fury Road composer Tom Holkenborg (also known as Junkie XL) returned to score Furiosa; this is his third collaboration with Miller after Fury Road and Three Thousand Years of Longing. Holkenborg moved to Sydney to pen the score and also helped prepare the final mix. He explained that because Furiosa was a character-driven film, the film's score had to be character-driven as well: "Musically, everything was being told from a first-person perspective, which is being her [Furiosa], how she, watches the world around her, The Wasteland, its cruelties."

Holkenborg added that Miller wanted a "way, way more subtle score" for Furiosa than Fury Road, the latter of which was "just massive action over 48 hours" and an "over-the-top rock opera". In particular, Miller vetoed reusing the song "Brothers in Arms" from Fury Road (which plays when Max and Furiosa help each other escape the Rock Rider canyon) during the Bullet Farm action sequence because he wanted to focus the audience's attention on the fact that Furiosa was willing to sacrifice her best chance at finding the Green Place to save Jack's life, and directed Holkenborg to use Fury Road's musical motifs for the Green Place instead. Miller explained that the Bullet Farm sequence needed to be "kind of a love story in the middle of an action scene". He wanted to show that "through their actions, [Furiosa and Jack] actually are prepared to give of themselves entirely to the other".

Furthermore, Holkenborg "used AI to make deep fake voices from another voice", explaining: "What if the source sound was a drum rhythm, and what if the destination sound was an electric guitar? But the software doesn't know what to make of it. So it gave us a happy accident that we used throughout the score". Warner Bros. in-house record label WaterTower Music released the official soundtrack album on 17 May 2024.

Marketing
On 29 November 2023, the Warner Bros. booth at CCXP featured a first-look image of Taylor-Joy's Furiosa. The following day, the teaser trailer of the film was released. On 19 March 2024, the official trailer debuted. At CinemaCon, Warner Bros. screened extended footage of the film on 9 April; Miller, Taylor-Joy, and Hemsworth appeared together for the first time in public to promote the film.

Running about five minutes, the extended preview shown at CinemaCon revealed that the film would be split into three distinct chapters ("Her Odyssey Begins", "A Warrior Awakens", and "A Ride Into Vengeance"). The final film actually features a total of five chapters: "The Pole of Inaccessibility", "Lessons from the Wasteland", "The Stowaway", "Homeward", and "Beyond Vengeance".

A trio of first-look images from the film were released exclusively by Total Film on 19 April. On 16 May, an extended sneak peek was released by Odeon Cinemas and was released on YouTube the following day.

Theatrical
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga had its world premiere at the 77th Cannes Film Festival, screening out-of-competition, on 15 May 2024. The film was released theatrically in Australia and India on 23 May 2024, and in the United States on 24 May 2024. It was originally scheduled to be released on 23 June 2023, but was delayed to May 2024. The film opened in China on 7 June 2024, becoming the first Mad Max film to be theatrically released there.

Home media
In May 2024, Miller confirmed that the film will be receiving a black-and-white treatment, similar to what he did for Fury Road (referred to as the "Black & Chrome" edition) in 2016, expressing interest in black-and-white as a format for films; a release date has not yet been announced.

The film was released on VOD and digital platforms on 24 June. It will be released on 4K UHD, Blu-ray, and DVD on 13 August; Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga Black & Chrome Edition will also be featured in the "Mad Max 5-Film 4K UHD Collector's Edition", which will be released on a later date in 2024.

Following its digital release, it was reported that Furiosa led the home viewing charts. The film came in at #1 on the iTunes VOD chart for 1 July and held the same position on the Fandango at Home chart for the week of 24 – 30 June.

Box office
, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga has grossed $67.5 million in the United States and Canada, and $105.3 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $172.8 million. The film's box-office performance has been deemed a failure. Critics and film pundits noted that the franchise's limited appeal in general and prequels, in particular, contributed to poor box-office performance.

Variety reported that industry insiders estimated that Furiosa needed to gross $350–375 million to turn a profit and that it would end up losing $75–95 million for the studio and its co-funders. However, a Warner Bros. spokesperson claimed that the film had a lower break-even point.

As much as half of the film's budget was covered by the NSW and Australian federal governments.

Performance
In the United States, Furiosa's $32.3 million gross in its four-day opening weekend was described as "disappointing"; industry analysts had projected $40 million. Of that $32.3 million, the film earned $10.4 million on its first Friday, including an estimated $3.5 million from Thursday night previews, the latter of which was similar to the $3.7 million made by Fury Road. Although Furiosa was the highest-grossing film during the Memorial Day weekend, beating The Garfield Movie and Sight, that weekend had the lowest total box-office receipts since 1995, and Furiosa was the lowest-grossing film to finish in first over Memorial Day since Casper ($22 million before inflation adjustment; also released in 1995).

Furiosa's $10.8 million second weekend (a 59% drop from the opening weekend, excluding Memorial Day itself) was also considered a disappointment, as The Garfield Movie dropped only 42% and won the weekend; for comparison, Fury Road had a 46% drop in its second weekend. As a whole, ticket sales for that weekend were down 65% from 2023. Domestic receipts fell an additional 61% in the third weekend, when Furiosa was pre-scheduled to surrender its premium large format screens, which are typically booked months in advance, to the premiere weekend of Bad Boys: Ride or Die. Furiosa's domestic box-office relied heavily on PLF screens.

Internationally, Furiosa grossed $33.3 million in the first three days, industry analysts had projected $40–45 million. A week prior, the film had opened at number one in Australia, earning AUD$3.33 million. During its second weekend, Furiosa performed relatively better in international markets, grossing $21 million, which Deadline Hollywood called "a good 38% drop ... but coming off a low base". The film premiered in Japan on 31 May 2024, one week behind the United States, and became the first non-Japanese film of 2024 to debut at number one. Reported by Variety, it also held the number one spot in China on its first day (7 June), over the country's Dragon Boat Festival holiday weekend, but its $3.58 million take in its first three-day weekend left it outside the top five. However, The Hollywood Reporter reported that the film opened in sixth place with $3.7 million as a batch of local releases dominated ticket sales; Chinese ticketing app Maoyan forecasted Furiosa to finish its run with about $7.5 million.

Analysis
Industry analysts identified a variety of reasons for Furiosa's opening weekend, which was considered weak in light of what film consultant David A. Gross called "outstanding reviews and a good audience score". The opening weekend was not entirely unexpected; in April 2024, Deadline Hollywood reported that "some" sources were expecting Furiosa to compete neck-and-neck with The Garfield Movie. However, following Furiosa's disappointing second weekend, an anonymous studio executive told a reporter that "it's mind-numbing that Furiosa hasn't grossed $50 million domestically." Gross and The Hollywood Reporter's Pamela McClintock wrote that Furiosa was hurt by the industry-wide disruption to the film production schedule caused by the 2023 Hollywood labor disputes, a position that (according to The New York Times) the film studios had been pushing for several months. According to Gross: "Moviegoing thrives on momentum and rhythm: one strong movie after another bringing fans to the multiplex once or more per month. Right now, the schedule is thin."

Despite being a female-fronted action film, Furiosa's opening weekend viewership skewed heavily male (72%) and young (55% of viewers were between ages 18–34). TheWrap's Jeremy Fuster speculated that one of the reasons for the "awful" underperformance was because the film is not a four-quadrant tentpole, writing: "Furiosa wasn't ever expected to be a Fast & Furious or Disney remake-level moneymaker for theaters, skewing more towards male audiences and to longtime Mad Max fans." Forbes' Paul Tassi praised Hemsworth and Taylor-Joy's performances, but questioned whether Furiosa commanded the same kind of brand recognition as a traditional IP-led tentpole feature, given that it was "a prequel spin-off of a side character in Fury Road who is not even being played by the same actress this time". After Bad Boys: Ride or Die debuted above expectations, box-office analyst Scott Mendelson tweeted that "sequels soar, prequels stumble, and 'originals' struggle, just like nearly every other summer".

Furiosa's domestic grosses disproportionately came from premium large format screenings (PLFs) like IMAX and Dolby Cinema, which command higher ticket prices than screenings in regular theatres, and (according to Warner Bros. executives) may appeal more to diehard fans. In its opening weekend, 54% of Furiosa's domestic gross came from PLFs, compared to 48% for Oppenheimer, 44% for Dune: Part Two, 42% for Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, and 37% for Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. Conversely, Screen Rant's Kate Bove suggested that Hollywood studios' eagerness to push content onto their own streaming services had encouraged everyday filmgoers to put off watching Furiosa in theatres on the assumption that Warner Bros. would "quickly transition" Furiosa to Max. She added that high budgets for tentpole features were "rais[ing] the bar for box office success".

Several critics and filmmakers urged audiences to watch the film without being put off by its weak box-office results. Vulture's Bilge Ebiri, who praised Miller for taking "a big franchise sequel and turn[ing] it into something strange, sublime, and potentially off-putting", urged analysts to focus on long-term performance and to give Furiosa time to grab a foothold in the marketplace, rather than write off the film based on its opening weekend. Ebiri also pointed to the 2023 cultural phenomenon of "Barbenheimer" (Barbie and Oppenheimer), which accumulated 75% of its total grosses after the opening weekend due to strong word of mouth. Director Wes Ball, whose film Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes had moved up its release date to avoid directly competing with Furiosa, encouraged people to go and watch the film on the big screen on Twitter by tweeting: "Like the movie or not, creative swings like this don't come around often. When they do, try to enjoy the ambition of it all in a great theater ... Furiosa was made because Fury Road was beloved, not because it was a box office hit."

Critical response
Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale, the same as Fury Road, while those polled by PostTrak gave the film an average of 4 1/2 stars out of 5, with 70% stating they would definitely recommend it.

Writing for RogerEbert.com, Robert Daniels awarded the film 4 out of 4 stars, and called it "one of the best prequels ever made". He praised the storyline, action sequences, and performances. Pete Hammond of Deadline Hollywood viewed the film as possessing "the best screenplay of any Mad Max film". The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw called Taylor-Joy "an overwhelmingly convincing action heroine". Writing for Empire, John Nugent awarded the film 5 out of 5 stars, and described Taylor-Joy as "phenomenal", finding the "right balance of steeliness and fractured humanity that Theron instilled". Jada Yuan from The Washington Post thought that Hemsworth had "created one of the all-time-great screen villains" and Jake Wilson of The Sydney Morning Herald saw him "steal[ing] the show".

In a critical review, Owen Gleiberman of Variety perceived Furiosa as filled with "pretension" and as "franchise overkill". Nicholas Barber of BBC also disliked some aspects of the film, giving it 3 out of 5 stars. He viewed the plot as meandering and as draining, writing: "You soon reach the point where you're sick of sand, sick of explosions, sick of off-puttingly sadistic violence." Stephanie Zacharek's review in Time similarly criticised the film as "a slog that's working hard to persuade us we're having a good time". John McDonald of the Australian Financial Review opined that part of the film's "failure may be attributed to the writing, but also to Hemsworth's woodenness as an actor".

Sequels and spin-offs
Pundits have suggested that the film's disappointing opening weekend has lowered the chances that Warner Bros. will greenlight Mad Max: The Wasteland, a second Fury Road prequel focusing on Max Rockatansky that Miller has teased for years. As of May 2024, The Hollywood Reporter reported that The Wasteland was not yet in development. Miller clarified that The Wasteland's source material (lore and other background material written in preparation for Fury Road) had not yet been adapted into a screenplay. He also said that he was "waiting to see the reception on Furiosa" before taking more concrete steps to develop The Wasteland into a feature film. Following the release of Furiosa, Hardy (who was promoting an unrelated film at the time) said in an interview that "I don't think [The Wasteland is] happening".