Doctor Strange Craters On Its Second Week
Doctor Strange and Multiverse of Madness plunged 67% at the box office. Strongly indicating there is very little repeat business for this movie. While it is still possible that it will crack the $1 billion mark it is now going to be a long uphill slog to do it. More likely it will leg out between $850 and $950 million.
Doctor Strange 2 needs (at a guess) $750 million to break even due to its prolonged delay. It will do that but there is a big question mark over how far beyond that point it’s going to go.
True Spiderman No Way Home had a similar drop on its second weekend, but that weekend was Christmas and this last weekend wasn’t Christmas. A 67% drop puts Doctor Strange 2 in Batman Vs Superman territory. When that movie only made $850 million the executions got underway at Warner Brothers and the entire Snyderverse was scrapped.
Bob Chapek doesn’t really have that option. He’s an accountant with no kind of creative ability whatsoever. If the Amazing Wonder Kevin has stopped spinning straw into gold, what does he do? Probably hire JJ Abrams or someone from his company. It never works and leaves a wrecked franchise in its wake every time, but it is what everybody does, so he’d probably do that.
A great deal of Multiverse of Madness’ initial earnings stemmed from leftover enthusiasm for Spiderman No Way Home. Thor: Love and Thunder (such a stupid title) is now launching in July on the heels of this meh-burger. And general audiences appear to have cottoned on to the Marvel bait and switch. Frankly, Thor 4 isn’t even trying to hide it. It’s too early to gauge public interest, so I’m not predicting a bomb. Yet. But I would be shocked if it doesn’t underperform.
In any case, Bob Chapek is too busy trying to come up with a list of believable reasons as to why he should be allowed to stay on as CEO of Disney to try and fix Marvel. He’s not in a position to launch major reforms anymore. If he couldn’t do anything about Kathleen Kennedy, there is absolutely nothing he can do about Kevin Feige and Victoria Alonso.
If Chapek is out, we will know by around December. Hollywood thinks Iger is going to be coming back. I won’t discount the possibility, but I think it’s wishful thinking by the entertainment trade media and the Wokeites Iger hired in the first place. While Iger was fired in the nicest way possible, he was fired. I strongly suspect that the institutional investors are talking to each other about various turnaround CEOs who might be interested in taking over Disney. Or splitting the company because it’s now an ungovernable mess. Or just selling the whole thing to Apple and walk away laughing.
Any way you look at it, Disney now lives in interesting times.
Okay, I’m done here.
