Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness has now achieved the fourth-highest opening weekend of the Marvel Cinematic Universe at the worldwide box office. The film, which is a follow-up to Scott Derrickson's 2016 film Doctor Strange, is the second solo film to feature Benedict Cumberbatch's sorcerer character. The film also features the return of director Sam Raimi to the Marvel fold. Although he previously directed the Tobey Maguire Spider-Man trilogy in the early 2000s, this is the first project he has helmed for the MCU proper. The horror-tinged film draws heavily on his experience on projects like Drag Me to Hell and the Evil Dead trilogy.
Doctor Strange 2 also acts as a direct follow-up to the 2021 Disney+ series WandaVision and the box office juggernaut Spider-Man: No Way Home. Although Tom Holland's Peter Parker doesn't appear in the film, the entire plot hinges on the consequences of the multiversal shenanigans he instigated, which forced him to team up with Maguire and Andrew Garfield's previous iterations of Spider-Man to fight villains from previous Spidey universes. The film also follows the emotional journey of Scarlet Witch/Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) as she deals with the loss of her "family" at the end of WandaVision. The film also features new multiverse-hopping heroine America Chavez (Xocitl Gomez) who must team up with Doctor Strange and Sorcerer Supreme Wong (Benedict Wong) to defeat a new terrifying menace.
Per Deadline, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is expected to have raked in a worldwide gross of $450 million by the end of today. This is the second-best opening weekend of the pandemic era, right after Spider-Man: No Way Home. However, it is competitive even in the pre-pandemic arena, marking the fourth-highest opening gross for any MCU project, behind Avengers: Endgame, Spider-Man: No Way Home, and Avengers: Infinity War.
Doctor Strange 2 has also outperformed the original Doctor Strange by a factor of 160%. This is likely due to several factors. First, the character of Doctor Strange has grown in popularity in the intervening six years, following his appearances in the Avengers crossover films as well as No Way Home and Thor: Ragnarok. Second, the film's advertising campaign promised a multiversal crossover that, while not on the level of No Way Home's crossover, piqued the curiosity of fans of the other characters that were promised to appear in the film, including Patrick Stewart's Professor X from the X-Men franchise.
Sam Raimi can certainly consider Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness another feather in his cap. Including his Spider-Man trilogy's worldwide grosses, he has now made Marvel the whopping sum of $2.96 billion over the course of his career. Once the film has completed its theatrical run, it will likely outgross every one of his Spider-Man films, showing how far the industry has come since those projects kickstarted the comic book movie boom of the 21st century.
Source: Deadline
