Weekend projections: Doctor Strange falls just shy of its target as openers falter

May 15, 2022

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness will fall 67% in its second weekend to $61 million, according to Disney’s Sunday-morning projection. That will take it to about $292 million domestically by the end of the day, and, with $396 million internationally, it will come out of the weekend with $688 million worldwide. While it’s falling rapidly, its second-weekend decline is very close to our model’s prediction, which was $62.6 million.

Here’s how the domestic numbers look this morning (click on the image for the full chart of films reporting so far)…



Any blockbuster movie faces a lot of scrutiny on its second week because its performance tells us a lot about how much it’ll make in total. The drop for Multiverse of Madness is considerably more than The Batman’s recent 50% sophomore fall, but exactly the same as Spider-Man: No Way Home’s 67% decline, which, to be fair, was influenced by its release date (its second weekend spanned the Christmas Holiday). Other comparable films had similar declines too though: Venom: Let There Be Carnage dropped 65%, Black Widow 68%, Shang-Chi 54%, and Eternals 62%.

Our model finds a statistically-significant negative correlation between a film’s theater average on opening weekend and its second-weekend decline—i.e., the more a film makes per theater on opening weekend, the harder it’ll fall second time out. That’s why it predicted a 67% decline for Doctor Strange: simply put, if the hardcore fans show up in force on opening weekend, there are fewer people to go to the film on its second weekend, unless there’s strong word of mouth or people have a good reason to see the film a second time. With reduced theatrical windows, even people who enjoyed a film enough to see it twice might decide to wait until it’s on Disney+, or tell their friends to wait until it’s streaming. That might explain why the negative correlation appears to be stronger post-pandemic.

Doctor Strange seems to be getting average word-of-mouth, based on this weekend’s results (or possibly poor word-of-mouth and high numbers of people seeing it for a second time). That’s not great news for Disney, but pulling in close to $700 million worldwide in ten days is still great business, and should put to rest any question that the Marvel franchise is in some sort of terminal decline.

The two new wide releases this weekend are struggling. Firestarter will come in with $3.82 million, per Universal, landing it in fourth place for the weekend, and barely more than half our model’s prediction. Family Camp is arguably doing a shade better, with $1.4 million representing both a better theater average than Firestarter ($1,639 to $1,120), and a better performance compared to our model’s prediction (65% to $56%). Neither film is likely to stay in theaters for long.

In general, most films in the top 10 are falling short of predicted numbers this weekend, and the top 10 as a whole will fall to $87.9 million, which is 8% short of expectations. There are two standout holds. Everything Everywhere All At Once, which will end the weekend with $47.1 million after falling just 6% this time around. The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent will be down 34% to $1.05 million this weekend. It has $18.2 million in total now. This weekend seems to be one where moviegoers are valuing creativity.

- Studio weekend projections
- All-time biggest weekends - All-time top-grossing movies in North America
- All-time top-grossing movies worldwide

Bruce Nash,