*UPDATE* Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness wound up making $187M over the weekend, due to a 37% drop from Saturday to Sunday. That may be due to people being distracted by Mother’s Day. Though it fell short of earlier predictions, Multiverse still has the 11th highest domestic opening on record, falling behind Avengers: Age of Ultron which opened with $191.2M on May 1, 2015.
This also marks director Sam Raimi’s biggest opening, topping 2007’s Spider-Man 3.
Original post below:
Due to Mother’s Day, it’s not quite clear how the weekend will wind up. It’s believed that the holiday will cause ticket sales to slow down considerably on Sunday, so the following information is based on projections.
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness sucked $194M-$197 million through the dimensional portal into this universe (and into Disney’s pockets). That’s shy of Spider-Man: No Way Home‘s $260M premiere… but not by that much! And honestly, while some optimists were predicting that Multiverse might match No Way Home, I think most knew that it couldn’t pull that off.
Even so, Multiverse had the biggest opening of 2022, besting The Batman‘s $128.5M bow.
Perhaps working against Multiverse, it has been made clear that this picture is not just a sequel to the first Doctor Strange film but WandaVision, not to mention that it connects to What If…?. I’ve seen some online reactions that indicate that many people haven’t watched the Disney+ shows and people don’t want to spend 10+ hours doing homework to watch a popcorn flick.
Twitter has blown up with some smartasses pointing out that viewers need to watch other shows or movies which have nothing to do with Marvel like all 37 seasons (or something like that) of Grey’s Anatomy.
But just for the record, you really should watch WandaVision before seeing this, as Multiverse is equally a sequel to that show as it is to the first Doctor Strange. What If…? introduces some other concepts, but honestly, I think you can skip that one if you want.
Sam Raimi directed Multiverse. Benedict Cumberbatch, Benedict Wong, and Rachel McAdams returned from the first movie. Of course, Elizabeth Olsen returns as Wanda Maximoff, now fully the true Scarlet Witch. Xochitl Gomez kicks her way into the MCU as teenage dimension hopper America Chavez.
Now for the less-than-good news. Multiverse didn’t get the best reviews. It’s now sitting at 75% positive on Rotten Tomatoes. That’s one percentage point lower than Avengers: Age of Ultron (76%) and places it ahead of only Iron Man 2 (72%), The Incredible Hulk (67%), Thor: The Dark World (66%), and Eternals (47%). You’ll notice that with the exception of Eternals, the other relatively poorly reviewed movies came from the first few years of the MCU when it was still trying to find its footing.
But what do the people think? They liked it. Multiverse‘s audience score is 88%. Exiting audiences gave it a B+ via CinemaScore. That’s the same score audiences gave the first Thor, and better than Eternals (B) and The Incredible Hulk (B-).
Just my opinion, it doesn’t deserve to be classified in the company of these early, less refined releases. There seems to be a Marvel backlash lately and this appears to be the latest casualty.
But despite mixed reception, Multiverse had the second-highest opening during the pandemic era, following that of No Way Home.
Here are the Top Five:
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- Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (Disney) – 3-day $195-197M/Wk 1
- The Bad Guys (Universal) – 3-day $9.77M/Total $57.5M/Wk 3
- Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (Paramount) – 3-day $6.2M/Total $169.9M/Wk 5
- Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore (Warner Bros.) – 3-day $3.95M/Total $86M/Wk 4
- Everything Everywhere All at Once (A24) – 3-day $3.3M/Total $41.56M/Wk 7
Most studios steer well clear of Marvel releases, allowing these pictures to reign for weeks at a time. So the fact that Universal/Blumhouse are dumping Firestarter next weekend probably indicates that the studio has no faith in it and that it’s pretty bad.
Zac Efron stars. (WHY can’t this guy make better career decisions?!)
But then again, Multiverse isn’t getting raves. Is it possible that Firestarter could catch fire and steal the top spot? (Uh… no. The answer is “no.”)
Check back to see how things go!
