Doctor Strange’s $85 million dollar bow is almost identical to Thor: The Dark World’s $85.7 million debut in November of 2013, and it gives parent studio Disney five of the top 10 openings in 2016 so far. With a stellar 90% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes and an “A” CinemaScore from opening weekend audiences, Doctor Strange, which stars Benedict Cumberbatch as Steven Strange, appears to be poised for a substantial run in the North American marketplace. Domestic audiences skewed male (58%) and hit a demographic sweet spot with 57% of the crowd between 13 and 34.
Doctor Strange got off to a great start on Thursday night pulling in $9.4 million in previews, the seventh best Thursday showing in Marvel Studios history behind Avengers: Age of Ultron, Captain America: Civil War, The Avengers, Iron Man 3, Guardians of the Galaxy, and Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Doctor Strange is also the first film to open in over 1000 IMAX theaters, which accounted for $24.2 million in worldwide ticket sales over the past weekend ($12.2 here in North America).
Doctor Strange opened in many foreign territories last weekend, and has now earned $240.4 million overseas for a worldwide cumulative of $325.4 million. This weekend it debuted in China, earning $44.6 million, close to Ant-Man’s $42.77 million bow in the Middle Kingdom, and substantially better than Guardians of the Galaxy’s $30 million opening in the world’s second largest movie market. Ant-Man earned about $102 million in China, and Doctor Strange should do at least as well.
When Marvel decided to finance and produce its own films, skeptics thought that it was a foolhardy enterprise, largely because Marvel Comic’s top characters (Spider-Man, the X-Men, Hulk, etc.) were already licensed to other studios, and many felt that the fledgling Marvel Studio’s boasts about the cinematic viability of Marvel’s second-tier characters were vastly overblown. It is hard to fault Kevin Feige and company’s choices of Guardians of the Galaxy and now Doctor Strange for potential movie franchises, and it is even harder to complain about Marvel’s creative choices such as James Gunn to direct Guardians with Chris Pratt starring or Scott Derrickson to helm Doctor Strange with Benedict Cumberbatch as the surgeon-turned-sorcerer. Now with Iron Man, Spider-Man, and the Hulk back in the fold, Marvel Studio’s judicious development of movie franchises from second-tier characters, has left it with more options to diversify and expand its output.
Doctor Strange’s strong worldwide debut has pushed Disney’s 2016 box office revenue to just over $6 billion so far, the company’s highest total ever. Disney currently has the top 4 films at the worldwide box office, Captain America: Civil War (1.153 billion), Finding Dory ($1.024 billion), Zootopia ($1.023 billion), and The Jungle Book ($966.4 million).
Second place went to the Dreamwork’s animated musical Trolls, which features the vocal talents (and vocalizing) of Justin Timberlake and Anna Kendrick. Trolls $45.6 million debut is slightly better than that of last November’s The Peanuts Movie ($44.2 million), and Trolls should end up with at least $130 million here in North America, and will do even better overseas where it has already earned $104 million.
Opening weekend audiences for Trolls, which skewed heavily female (61%) and younger (51% under 25), gave the film a solid “A” CinemaScore. Families made up 72% of the crowd, which was 57% Caucasian, 19% Hispanic, and 15% African-American.
This week’s other wide new release, Mel Gibson’s R-rated war drama Hacksaw Ridge (about the first conscientious objector to win the Medal of Honor) took third place with $14.75 million. This World War II drama has a strong faith-based angle as well as delivering the grisly goods depicting the horrors of modern combat with visceral impact, and audiences gave the film an “A” CinemaScore with those over 50 giving it an “A+”—and there were plenty of the gender-balanced audience that were over 50, with 68% over 35.
With three such successful newcomers, there wasn’t much left for the holdovers, but Tyler Perry’s Boo! A Medea Halloween held on pretty well, dropping just 54.7% in its first post-holiday weekend, earning $7.8 million and driving its domestic total to almost $65 million. Boo! will likely become Perry’s second highest grossing directorial effort.
No such luck for Inferno, the third film in the Da Vinci Code series, which tumbled 58% from its inauspicious debut, earning $6.2 million to bring its ten-day total to $26 million, which is still less that The Da Vinci Code earned on its opening day.
Action films The Accountant and Jack Reacher: Never Go Back suffered small drops (30% and 42% respectively). The Accountant, which cost $44 million to produce, looks like it will turn a modest profit for Warner Bros., while the slightly more expensive Never Go Back ($60 million) will need to do well overseas.
Though the Hasbro-based Ouija: Origin of Evil has not been a flashy box office performer, it has earned over $31 million, which given its $9 million cost, means that it managed to turn a tidy profit without much notice.
Likewise Universal’s The Girl on the Train, which slipped to number nine and has just about played out its box office run, is no Gone Girl, but thanks to foreign earnings it will show a profit, which will probably also be the case for Tim Burton’s Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, which will end its domestic run under $90 million, but has earned $170 million overseas.
Mention should be made of Barry Jenkins Moonlight, which made it to #11 in spite of the fact that it is in just 83 theaters, and Loving, the biographical film about the interracial couple, who brought the Supreme Court case that struck down laws against miscegenation, which topped the specialty box office. Look for both of these films to Oscar nominations.
Be sure to check back here next weekend to see if a trio of newcomers including Denis Villeneuve’s eagerly-awaited science fiction drama The Arrival, the ensemble comedy Almost Christmas, or the Naomi Watts thriller Shut In can put the hex on Doctor Strange.