By Tre’vell Anderson / Los Angeles Times
Doctor Strange and Trolls were the right remedies for a bruised fall box-office season.
The Walt Disney Co.’s Marvel Studios release Doctor Strange pulled in an estimated $85 million in the US and Canada over the weekend, surpassing even the most liberal analyst expectations of $80 million. The film also was a hit internationally, earning $203.7 million globally this weekend. After opening internationally last week, the film’s global gross after just 13 days is $325.4 million on a production budget of $165 million.
Doctor Strange is the 14th consecutive No. 1 debut for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, beating the $57-million opening last year of Ant-Man (though shy of the $94-million surprise opening for Guardians of the Galaxy in 2014). Combined with a $45.6-million opening weekend for Trolls, the performance of Doctor Strange helps a fall box office that had been down about 10 percent from the same period last year.
“I think it all is a testament of Marvel Studios’s unbroken streak of critical and commercial success, proving that Marvel remains the best of the best in the superhero genre and beyond,” said Dave Hollis, Disney’s distribution executive.
Starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Doctor Strange, based on the comic-book character, is about a former neurosurgeon who harnesses mystical powers. Directed by Sinister helmer Scott Derrickson, the picture explores concepts such as alternate dimensions and the multiverse, unusual territory for the Marvel franchise, where action fare, such as Iron Man and The Avengers is more standard.
But critics and audiences (58 percent male and 81 percent adults) were in favor. The flick has a 90-percent positive rating from critics on Rotten Tomatoes and received an “A” CinemaScore from moviegoers. Doctor Strange did very well on 3D screens, which generated 47 percent of its domestic opening weekend gross. While RealD 3D accounted for an estimated $24 million of the gross, IMAX pulled in $12.2 million domestically.
“Doctor Strange is exactly the kind of imaginative and energetic event 3D programming that gets audiences excited to buy tickets to experience this enhanced visual format,” Anthony Marcoly, president of worldwide cinema for RealD, said in a statement.
Greg Foster, chief executive of IMAX Entertainment, added: “As the lines blur [between film and television], it becomes essential for those in cinema to differentiate. [Doctor Strange] demands to be seen in theaters.”
Those who saw it on IMAX screens were treated to 60 minutes of exclusive IMAX expanded-aspect ratio footage. That helped Strange to become the picture with the biggest November IMAX weekend ever, domestically and internationally. (Previous best was 2014’s Interstellar.)
Hollis agreed, noting that Doctor Strange “is a movie that movie theaters exist for.”
“It’s a completely different experience [in theaters] than any other way you’d want to experience it,” he said. “It’s meant to be a theatrical experience.”
And for a marketplace that has generally been down, creating an unusual theater experience is the key to boosting the box office, which Doctor Strange has done. Weekend numbers helped this year’s to-date gross ($9.4 billion) stay about 4.4 percent above last year’s ($9 billion).
Also helping the fall box office was fellow new release Trolls. The DreamWorks Animation picture’s $45.6 million beat analyst expectations of $35 million to $40 million.
“Ultimately, it’s a feel-good movie,” said Chris Aronson, 20th Century Fox’s distribution head. “This is one of those, ‘Yeah, you can’t stop the feeling’ type of movies, and that feeling is feel good.”
Based on the quirky Danish dolls with the long, colorful hair, Trolls stars the voices of major celebrities, including Justin Timberlake and Anna Kendrick. Zooey Deschanel, Gwen Stefani and Russell Brand also voice characters.
Though the toys aren’t as popular as they once were, the computer-animated offering, which cost about $125 million to make, benefited from mostly positive early reviews. Additionally, the lead single from Timberlake, “Can’t Stop the Feeling,” which was intentionally released almost six months ahead of the film’s debut, was a summer hit, setting the stage for the original picture idea.
Attracting a primarily family audience (72 percent, and 61 percent female), the film has a 74-percent positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes and audiences have gifted it an “A” CinemaScore.
Comparatively, Trolls performed better than DreamWorks’s previous film, Kung Fu Panda 3 ($41 million). It did, however, come in slightly lower than the studio’s 2015 hit Home ($52 million).
The film has pulled in an international gross to date of $104 million.
Taking the weekend’s third spot was the last of new wide releases, Hacksaw Ridge from Lionsgate. The World War II tale garnered $14.8 million, beating analyst expectations of $12 million. Directed by Mel Gibson, the film tells the story of a real-life conscientious objector who refused to take up arms during the Battle of Okinawa.
The picture, which stars Andrew Garfield as Army medic and Seventh-Day Adventist Desmond T. Doss, was well received by critics and audiences alike. It has an 87-percent positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and moviegoers gave it an “A” CinemaScore.
Rounding out the top 5 were holdovers: Lionsgate’s Tyler Perry’s Boo! A Madea Halloween, which added $7.8 million for a gross of $65 million, and Sony’s Inferno, which added $6.3 million for a gross of $26.1 million.
On the limited-release front, Focus Features’s Loving debuted to $169,000 in just four theaters. That’s a strong per-theater average of $42,250 for the film based on the true-life story of Richard and Mildred Loving (Joel Edgerton and Ruth Negga), who fought Virginia’s laws barring interracial marriage all the way to the Supreme Court.
Additionally, A24’s acclaimed R-rated drama Moonlight continues to do well. After adding 83 theaters this weekend, the Barry Jenkins-directed flick pulled in an additional $1.3 million—an impressive per-theater average of $16,053—for a gross to date of $3.1 million.
Coming to theaters this week are Paramount’s Arrival, Universal’s Almost Christmas and EuropaCorp’s Shut In. Sony’s Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk will debut in limited release.