Marvel Studios has been making it a habit of using lesser-known comic book based intellectual property, and turning it into gold. Marvel's "Doctor Strange" is no exception, opening to a massive $86 million in the international box office.
Now, in a report by Variety, Marvel's "Doctor Strange is crushing the ticket pre-sales, and could possibly be a monumental factor in making the film highly successful in its opening weekend. The superhero adventure with a mystical theme movie is the top ticket seller on Fandango, with reports that sale are much faster than Marvel's previous stand-alone films, "Ant-Man" and the first "Thor" at the same point in their sales cycle.
MovieTickets.com also reports that Marvel's "Doctor Strange" is expected to lead the box office, with a projection of $70 million domestically. The projections would topple the previous ticket sales of the opening weekend of "Ant-Man" which is $57.2 million and "Thor" which brought in $65.7 million. However, according to Yahoo Movies, it would be able to outdo Marvel's our stand-alone blockbusters like "Guardians of the Galaxy" with a surprising $94.3 million or the staggering $179.1 million opening weekend of "Captain America: Civil War."
As far as runner-up goes, Dreamworks Animation's "Trolls" is the second top-selling film on Fandango. The Anna Kendrick and Justin Timberlake led animated film is projected to open to roughly $38 million. The weekend is ripe for diversity, and family films will be picking-up the overflow from Marvel's "Doctor Strange." The projections for "Trolls" is very positive when considering that Dreamworks Animation's previous opening weekend for "Home" debuted to $51.2 million in 2015. Mel Gibson's war drama that stars Andrew Garfield, "Hacksaw Ridge" is primed for the third-highest selling film on Fandango.
In a fan survey organized by Fandango, more than a thousand ticket-buyers for Marvel's "Doctor Strange" found that 97% of of ticket-buyers were fans of the cinematic universe that Marvel has created, 85% were more intrigued with a darker superhero film, and 82% said that they were fans of Benedict Cumberbatch.
