doctor-strange-banner

It was no surprise that Marvel’s champ ‘Doctor Strange’ dominated the weekend box office for a second weekend in a row.  The movie not only scored big with audiences last weekend in terms of money, but its exit scores gave it a dazzling A+ and critics have agreed, with it ranking 90% on Rotten Tomatoes.  By most accounts, this is Marvel’s best film in years and fittingly, the $43M it made this weekend, taking it to a cume of $153, bested Marvel’s previous fall release ‘Thor: The Dark World’.

‘Doctor Strange”s success, added to that of the year’s two highest grossing movies, ‘Finding Dory’ ($486M) and ‘Captain America: Civil War’ ($408M), not to mention ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ which was still going strong into January and beyond, plus other hits like ‘The Jungle Book’ and ‘Zootopia’ puts Disney at $2.3 billion for the year, a new record.

$5.4M of ‘Doctor Strange”s second week numbers came from large format (i.e. IMAX 3D) screens, as the mesmerizing visuals are driving fans to see the film in its full glory.  But things will change next weekend, when most theaters will swap this film out for ‘Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them’.

arrival-amy-adams-jeremy-rennerLike ‘Strange’, Dreamwork’s family film ‘Trolls’ stood firm at the #2 spot, generating an additional $35M.  Most animated films drop off 40% but ‘Trolls’ only fell 25% which is great!  Audience members polled gave the film a positive 84% in its second frame.

New sci fi flick, ‘Arrival’ from Paramount took in a strong $24M.  The film stars Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner, neither of whom have proven to be major box office draws outside of their respective super hero franchises.  But the film opened about $9M higher than expected and Paramount is pushing for Academy Award recognition for Adams.  This successful opening could spell good things for this campaign.

With Halloween over, ‘Boo! A Medea Halloween’ is fading which benefited the African American-skewing ‘Almost Christmas’ another new release.  The film took in $15.56M, which was along the lines of predictions but that’s a bit shy of the $18M that director Will Packer’s previous holiday film ‘This Christmas’.  Reviews haven’t been good, but audiences gave it an A score.

‘Hacksaw Ridge’ continued to do well in its second weekend with $10.8M but EuropaCorp’s thriller ‘Shut In’ bombed with $3.6M, and a #8 opening.  Despite its tiny $10M budget, EuroaCorps may have to look toward VOD and home video to make back its investment.

  1. Doctor Strange (Disney/Marvel Studios) – $43M
  2. Trolls (Dreamworks/20th Century Fox) – $35M
  3. Arrival (Paramount) – $24M
  4. Almost Christmas (Universal) – $15.56M
  5. Hacksaw Ridge (Lionsgate) – $10.8M

Next week will easily go to ‘Fantastic Beasts’, it’s just a question of how much it will make and how much it will take away from ‘Doctor Strange’ and ‘Trolls’.

Check back to see how things work out!

Source: Deadline