After a very quiet weekend at the box office last week, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is about to usher in the summer box office season in a very big way.
Throughout the pandemic, as movie theaters began to reemerge from their shuttering period, Marvel took on COVID-19 and won just about every time. Beginning with Black Widow ($80 million) in the summer of 2021, the openings have been stellar. This continued in September with Shang-Chi And the Legend of the Ten Rings ($75 million) and in November with Eternals ($71 million), even though its critical reception hit a low for the MCU. Even Marvel adjacent movies, like Venom: Let There Be Carnage ($92 million), which is more of a Sony Pictures baby, proved to be reliable.
The arrival of Spider-Man: No Way Home took all of these box office openings to a whole new level and gave even more confidence to theater owners that moviegoing was going back to normal. It was a perfect storm of coming out at the right time and catering to the nostalgia factor of the audience. The movie proved to be the biggest film of last year and now another Marvel release is coming off of the heat of its success.
Benedict Cumberbatch’s Doctor Strange appeared in Spider-Man: No Way Home and his spell set off multiverse implications that allowed old villains and heroes from across the other Spider-Man movies to appear. That story has seemingly been put to rest but Doctor Strange has to deal with his own issues with the multiverse in the follow-up to his introduction in 2016’s Doctor Strange. The immense heat coming off his Spider-Man appearance is one of a few reasons why Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is set to make a killing at the box office this weekend.
The original Doctor Strange opened to $85 million back in 2016 and all signs point to its sequel scoring well beyond that figure. According to Deadline, the presales are the best of 2022 to date, even surpassing The Batman. Fandango also said that the movie is selling five times as many tickets as the 2016 film and it’s also beating the presales for Captain Marvel ($153.4 million opening), Thor: Ragnarok ($122.7 million opening), and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.2 ($146.5 million opening). Tracking has the Doctor Strange sequel at $150 million+ but I’m predicting an even bigger opening is in the cards.
Not only is the film riding the wave of Spider-Man: No Way Home, but fans of WandaVision are also eagerly anticipating how Wanda Maximoff aka Scarlet Witch will be integrated into the movie. Fans want to see where her character ended up and how her powers will play a part in what happens in the film’s narrative. WandaVision was one of the more popular Disney+ Marvel shows and reports from those who have seen the movie already say she’s just as important, if not more, than the titular character in his own story. A quick glance over at Twitter shows just how popular her character is at this moment and that just adds another layer to its box office potential.
Also of note is the return of director Sam Raimi to the comic book movie fold. 2002’s Spider-Man celebrated its 20th anniversary this week and it made fans nostalgic for what he did to bring comic book films into a new mainstream era that arguably helped shaped what would become the MCU. He’s at the helm of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and reviews, even the mixed ones, applaud Raimi getting to flex his style all over the big screen. His fans are very excited to see this and that could also propel the film’s opening weekend to great heights.
Another interesting aspect that could play into its success is that the trailer for Avatar: The Way of Water is exclusively rolling out ahead of the film for the movie’s first week. This will be the only way to see the trailer for the Avatar sequel until it’s released online and that could also be a reason for hardcore fans to catch the film this weekend as a lot of people will be talking about it.
The biggest question will be if it can reach beyond the Marvel audience. Spider-Man: No Way Home is 93% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes and the character has much more mass appeal. As of this writing, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is 78% fresh, which is a solid figure, but will it be enough to intrigue casual moviegoers? Deadline reports that presales have reached $65 million, which is above the $42 million of The Batman, but they also report that a bulk of the presales are for Thursday night. This could indicate that the film will be EXTREMELY frontloaded so it will be interesting to see how it plays through the whole weekend.
Despite some questions about frontloading, I still think the movie is going to over-index this weekend. There are too many factors working in its favor and there is bound to be an opening weekend rush so they can avoid spoilers. Some of the film’s surprises have been teased in trailers but there is more to experience. Some of those secrets did leak on Sunday but that probably only made some fans want to see it more to see if it’s all true. Due to this, I’m predicting a $180 million start for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.
The rest of the top five will consist of holdovers and they’ll be fighting for scraps. The Bad Guys will fall to second after two impressive, and maybe unexpected, weekends at number one. Doctor Strange will take some of its kid audience so I’m predicting about $9 million for its third weekend. Sonic The Hedgehog 2 will place third with a gross of $6.5 million while Everything Everywhere All At Once might continue its stellar word of mouth platform performance and jump up to fourth place with about $5 million. Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore should round out the top five with a gross of $4.2 million.
What are YOUR thoughts on this weekend’s box office predictions?
TOP FIVE BOX OFFICE PREDICTIONS: