‘Dr. Strange’ Gives Summer Movie Season a Strong Start

The film, produced by

Walt Disney Co.

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’s Marvel Studios and distributed by Disney, raked in $450 million at the global box office on its opening weekend, $185 million of it from theaters in North America, giving it the 11th-best domestic opening for a major motion picture of all time, according to box-office tracker Comscore.

The success of “Dr. Strange” is important for Marvel, Disney and the film industry in general, because as the first blockbuster of the summer—which traditionally runs from early May through Labor Day—it has the potential to set the tone for the whole season.

In each of roughly the past 15 years, the movie industry has settled into a predictable routine: Box-office receipts generated during the 18 weeks starting with the first weekend of May onward total about $4 billion, which usually accounts for about 40% of the domestic annual box office.

The pandemic derailed that formula. In 2020, after most movie theaters closed to stem the spread of the coronavirus, movies earned just $176.4 million during the summer period, according to Comscore.

Last year, with studios and moviegoers still trepidatious about emerging coronavirus variants and periodic surges in cases, the summer didn’t really kick off until Memorial Day weekend with sci-fi thriller “A Quiet Place Part II.” But as Covid-19 cases eased and moviegoers began to feel more comfortable returning to indoor entertainments, receipts totaled $1.8 billion last summer—better than the previous summer but still less than half of a typical blockbuster season’s earnings.

Viewers have been steadily returning to theaters over the past six months, especially to see superhero films such as “Spider Man: No Way Home,” released in December, and “The Batman,” which came out in March.

“The summer openings really set the tone for the whole year. You don’t have a summer, you don’t really have a year,” said

Paul Dergarabedian,

senior media analyst at Comscore.

Foot traffic at movie theaters means viewers are seeing trailers for coming films, they are exposed to in-theater advertising and they are marketing the theatergoing experience to friends and family by word of mouth. “Momentum is everything,” Mr. Dergarabedian said. “You lose that momentum, audiences start to check out.”

For Marvel Studios, which has now produced nine of the top 15 opening-weekend grossing blockbusters of all time, the stakes were high. The last feature that the studio produced for distribution by its parent company, Disney, was November’s “Eternals,” which grossed just over $400 million world-wide, a commercial failure by Marvel’s lofty standards.

January’s “Spider Man: No Way Home,” so far the highest-grossing movie of the pandemic, was co-produced by Marvel but distributed by Sony Pictures Entertainment under the terms of an agreement struck before Disney acquired Marvel Studios in 2009. The Spider Man film has so far grossed $805 million domestically and nearly $1.9 billion world-wide.

“Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” is a convoluted tale about a neurosurgeon-turned-superhero who travels through alternate universes to save America Chavez, a teenager with superpowers, from the villain Wanda Maximoff. The film’s main character, Dr. Stephen Strange, played by Mr. Cumberbatch, was a draw for fans, having appeared in a supporting role in this year’s Spider Man movie.

In “No Way Home,” Dr. Strange, an ally of Spider Man, seeks to cast a spell on the world populace so that everyone will forget the identity of Spider Man’s alter-ego, Peter Parker, which has been revealed to the public.

“The difference between this one and ‘Eternals’ is that everyone who saw ‘Spider Man: No Way Home,’ is going to want to see ‘Dr. Strange,’ because he’s sort of a sidekick of Peter Parker,” Mr. Degarabedian said.

The robust box office haul will surely come as a relief and a welcome distraction for Disney, which has been dealing with fallout from a political confrontation with Florida Gov.

Ron DeSantis

over the company’s stance on social issues. The company is also contending with a steep decline in its share price, the result in part of investor jitters over the viability of the streaming video business.

Disney has bet big on its flagship Disney+ streaming service, but it has warned the market that subscriber growth is likely to slow before it gets better in the second half of this year. Rival

Netflix Inc.

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saw its market value plummet 45% after it reported its first net subscriber loss in a decade last month. Disney shares are down 46% year to date, to $110.32.

The strong performance of the “Dr. Strange” sequel sets the stage for a jackpot summer for movie studios and exhibitors, which are gearing up for a half-dozen big-name titles they hope will carry earnings for the rest of the year.

“Top Gun: Maverick,” the latest installment in

Paramount Global’s

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Tom Cruise-led action franchise, comes out in two weeks, while Universal’s dinosaur thriller “Jurassic World Dominion” follows on June 10. Disney has two more important titles set for release this summer: Pixar Animation Studios’ “Lightyear,” the backstory of “Toy Story” hero Buzz Lightyear, comes out June 17 and Marvel’s “Thor: Love and Thunder” is set for July 8. A sequel to Marvel’s “Black Panther,” a hit for Disney, is expected near the end of the year.

The success of franchise blockbusters could have positive knock-on effects for smaller, auteur films as well, Mr. Dergarabedian said. Jordan Peele, the writer and director who carved out his own distinctive brand of horror thrillers with “Get Out” and “Us,” has a new film, “Nope” coming out July 22, distributed by Universal, while Warner Bros.’s Elvis Presley biopic comes out June 24.

Part of the success of “Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” had to do with the high number of screens on which it appeared. The film appeared at 4,534 theater locations domestically, the most for any May movie opening since Disney’s remake of “Aladdin” in 2019, according to Comscore.

It helped that “Dr. Strange” didn’t have much competition in its opening weekend from other big titles, said

Richard Gelfond,

chief executive of movie-technology company

IMAX Corp.

IMAX 1.60%

The film set opening-weekend box-office records domestically and globally for theaters that use IMAX’s movie-display technology, grossing $33 million in its first weekend, with $18 million of the total coming from North America, IMAX said.

“It was our best May opening weekend ever,” Mr. Gelfond said.

Write to Robbie Whelan at [email protected]