‘Doctor Strange' remains atop box office as 'Top Gun' looms

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media Reporter“Top Gun: Maverick” has the box office sizzling… again.In its second weekend of release, Tom Cruise’s all-American action film collected a sensational $86 million from 4,751 North American theaters. Those returns rank among the top 10 highest-grossing second weekends in domestic box office history.Pandemic times or not, the Paramount and Skydance release is eclipsing significant box office milestones at record speed.

J. Kim Murphy Tom Cruise is king at the domestic box office once again.Paramount’s “Top Gun: Maverick” is soaring to the top of the charts for its second weekend of release, drawing in a commanding $25 million on Friday from 4,751 locations.

Top Gun: Maverick has brought in a huge box office haul on its opening weekend.The sequel to 1986’s Top Gun, which sees Tom Cruise return as Captain Pete ‘Maverick’ Mitchell, has already taken $248million (£196million) worldwide since its release on Friday (May 27).Of those takings, $151million (£119million) were in the US, with the film screening at a record-breaking 4,732 cinemas, the most for any film on its first weekend.This makes Maverick the highest-grossing opening for a non-superhero film since the COVID-19 pandemic began, as well as the first Cruise film to go over the $100million (£79million) mark on opening weekend.It sits behind last year’s Spider-Man: No Way Home ($206million/£162million), Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness ($148million/£116million) and The Batman ($106million/£83million).While Cruise returns for the blockbuster, original stars Kelly McGillis (Charlie Blackwood) and Meg Ryan (Carole Bradshaw) are both absent from the film.Explaining the decision not to include the characters, director Joseph Kosinski told Insider: “Those weren’t stories that we were throwing around.“I didn’t want every storyline to always be looking backwards.

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media ReporterTom Cruise’s star-spangled blockbuster “Top Gun: Maverick” capped off Memorial Day weekend with a box office debut for record books. The sequel, which sees Cruise return to the cockpit after 36 years, collected $156 million in its first four days of release.Those ticket sales were enough to overtake Disney’s “Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End,” which launched with $153 million over the long weekend in 2007, as the biggest Memorial Day debut in history.Paramount and Skydance had originally expected “Top Gun: Maverick” to finish the long weekend with $151 million, but the film had a better-than-expected turnout on Sunday, pushing the three-day haul to $126 million.

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media ReporterTom Cruise may have pulled off one of the most daring stunts of his career — getting audiences to go to the movies for something that doesn’t involve superheroes.“Top Gun: Maverick” pulled in blockbuster ticket sales in its opening weekend, collecting $134 million from a record 4,732 North American cinemas. Paramount and Skydance’s all-American action adventure is expected to collect $151 million through Monday, defying expectations while also setting a new high-water mark for Memorial Day opening weekends.

Superheroes aren’t the only ones making an impact at the box office. According to Deadline, "Top Gun: Maverick" is ranking $150 million over four days – the best opening for the film’s lead Tom Cruise. Comscore shared that over Memorial Day weekend, the "Top Gun" sequel now takes the place of the highest grossing movie over the holiday weekend.

Jordan Moreau Tom Cruise’s all-American blockbuster “Top Gun: Maverick” has begun its box office flight, taking in $19.3 million on Thursday.The large Thursday haul marks the biggest preview for Paramount Pictures and the highest preview for the Memorial Day holiday.The long-delayed sequel to 1986’s “Top Gun” could become the first movie of Cruise’s career to open to $100 million. Thanks to positive reviews, high anticipation and heaps of nostalgia, “Top Gun: Maverick” is projected to rake in $85 million to $100 million over the long Memorial Day weekend.Paramount was originally supposed to open “Top Gun: Maverick” in the summer of 2020, but the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic had other plans and scrambled its takeoff. Two years later, the tentpole finally premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, where crowds of movie-lovers lined up to see the star in action.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau ChiefCinema box office this year in North America is poised to overtake theatrical revenues in China, the country that has been the world’s largest movie market for the past two years.Before the latest weekend, gross revenues in the year to date stood at $2.38 billion for the North American compared with $2.43 billion for China, according to data from ComScore.U.K.-based research firm Gower Street Analytics forecast that the North American figure would overtake China’s revenues over the weekend or early this week. That reflects business growth in North America and the current reversal in China, where anti-COVID measures are causing renewed cinema closures.Gower Street says that some 85% of global cinemas are now open for business, compared with pre-pandemic levels.

As the widest release ever in the history of Focus Features, “Downton Abbey: A New Era” has been a film theaters have pinned their hopes for stronger senior turnout on for months, though it was never expected to match the $31 million opening of the first “Downton Abbey” movie in fall 2019. But an $18 million opening would be a step up from the poor openings of 2021 films aimed towards older audiences like “Cry Macho” ($4.4 million) and “West Side Story” ($10.5 million).

A rundown of notable films coming out this summer:May 6“Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” (Disney, theaters): After breaking open the multiverse in “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” Benedict Cumberbatch once again takes center stage as the brilliant Doctor Strange as he and Wong deal with new enemies in the Sam Raimi-directed spectacle.“Happening” (IFC, theaters): This Venice Film Festival winner directed by Audrey Diwan is based on Annie Ernaux’s memoir about being a young college student in 1960s France seeking to terminate a pregnancy when it was still illegal.“Along for the Ride ”(Netflix): A teenage girl meets a mysterious insomniac the summer before college.May 11“Operation Mincemeat” (Netflix): John Madden directs two Mr.

“Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” stayed on top of the box office charts during its second weekend in theaters, earning an additional $61 million from North American theaters, according to studio estimates on Sunday.With $688 million in global grosses, it’s already one of the highest grossing films of the pandemic and the second biggest of 2022. But a 67% fall is also a steep drop — even for reliably frontloaded superhero films.

“Doctor Strange 2” screenwriter Michael Waldron knows a thing or two about the multiverse. He first burst onto the scene as a writer on the beloved animated series “Rick and Morty” and was in line to become the show’s new showrunner, that is until Marvel Studios came calling asking if he wanted to head up a live-action TV show about Tom Hiddleston’s trickster villain Loki.It was while working on the Disney+ series “Loki” that Waldron was offered the opportunity to take a crack at a few different things all in one project: Marvel’s first horror movie, a Sam Raimi movie and a “Doctor Strange” sequel.

A rundown of notable films coming out this summer:May 6“Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” (Disney, theaters): After breaking open the multiverse in “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” Benedict Cumberbatch once again takes center stage as the brilliant Doctor Strange as he and Wong deal with new enemies in the Sam Raimi-directed spectacle.“Happening” (IFC, theaters): This Venice Film Festival winner directed by Audrey Diwan is based on Annie Ernaux’s memoir about being a young college student in 1960s France seeking to terminate a pregnancy when it was still illegal.“Along for the Ride ”(Netflix): A teenage girl meets a mysterious insomniac the summer before college.May 11“Operation Mincemeat” (Netflix): John Madden directs two Mr.

After crossing the $200M domestic mark on Monday, Disney/Marvel’s Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness on Tuesday zoomed past $500M global. It is also nearing $300M at the international box office, certain to reach that milestone today.

Movies US charts:1. Spider-Man: No Way Home2. Uncharted3.

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media ReporterFor the past two years, box office reports have been accompanied by a COVID-shaped asterisk: Ticket sales were [insert adjective of choice] for a pandemic.After all, “Wonder Woman 1984,” “F9: The Fast Saga” and every would-be blockbuster in between could have generated more in ticket sales without a devastating global health crisis upending the movie theater landscape.But as “Venom: Let There Be Carnage” debuted to $90 million last October ($10 million more than its predecessor) and “Spider-Man: No Way Home” landed the second-highest domestic debut in history with $260 million, the caveats began to fade. Add in “The Batman” ($134 million debut in March) and “Sonic the Hedgehog 2” ($71 million start in April, $13 million more than its predecessor), and those numbers weren’t just notable for a pandemic, they were plain notable.

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media ReporterDoctor Strange and his questionably effective book of spells has summoned a blockbuster $185 million at North American movie theaters over the weekend, reaffirming the box office dominance of Disney’s Marvel Cinematic Universe after a shakier, pandemic-battered year for the franchise.The timeline-bending “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” represents a return to form for Disney’s MCU after COVID-era releases “Black Widow” ($80 million debut, plus $60 million on Disney Plus), “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” ($75 million debut), and “Eternals” ($71 million debut). Due to the pandemic and other extenuating circumstances, those installments failed to live up to their franchise predecessors in terms of ticket sales.

Though that’s below the $202 million opening that industry estimates had following the MCU film’s $90 million opening day, it is still at the top of the $170-185 million estimate that Disney posted. Globally, “Doctor Strange 2” has earned an opening of $450 million, second only to “Spider-Man: No Way Home” for worldwide openings since the COVID-19 pandemic began.