It’s been a little while since Marvel Studios released the fourteenth film in their cinematic universe – Doctor Strange – and it’s gone pretty well. So well, that I thought I’d start discussing whether or not we’re getting a sequel. However, I will be talking about spoilers for the film in this post.
Review Aggregators & Audience Reaction:
- Rotten Tomatoes: 90% (Based on 251 critics)
- Metacritic: 72 (Based on 49 critics)
- CinemaScore: A
- My Review.
Box Office Notes:
- U.S. Opening Weekend: $85 million.
- Second Weekend Estimate: $43 million (-49.4%).
- Current Worldwide Box Office Total: $494 million (As of November 14th).
Critics and audiences love Doctor Strange – and I loved it too – and it’s doing pretty spectacularly at the box office too. Remember, general audience don’t know about Stephen Strange, yet somehow it managed to have a bigger opening weekend than the origin stories for Hulk, Captain America, Ant-Man, and Thor had. Doctor Strange opened to almost the same exact amount as Thor: The Dark World did.
Let’s start answering the question at hand. Are we getting a sequel? Well, the post-credits scene sure hinted at Karl Mordo playing a bigger part in the future of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which isn’t a surprise to comic book fans. He’s likely becoming the villain that we all expected him to become.
That, however, doesn’t mean we’re absolutely getting a sequel, but let’s just compare this film with Ant-Man – seeing as that film got a sequel greenlit only, like, three or four months after the first film had been released.
Well, the production budget for Ant-Man wasn’t as large as the budget for Doctor Strange, but, at the time of writing (based on Box Office Mojo), Doctor Strange is only around $25 million behind Ant-Man‘s final worldwide box office total.
Even if, somehow, Marvel Studios don’t announce a sequel to Doctor Strange, the mid-credits scene seemed to, at the very least, hint that Stephen Strange will be appearing in Thor: Ragnarok.
Bottom Line Prediction: Oh yeah, I’m pretty sure we’re getting a sequel. At the very least, Cumberbatch’s Doctor Stephen Strange will quickly become one of the new stars of the cinematic universe.
Final Note: It’s been a pretty interesting year for Marvel movies, and with Doctor Strange out in theaters, there are no more films from Marvel that will be released in 2016. Therefore Marvelous Monday will be going on a hiatus, only to return in early January 2017. Until then, stay marvelous!
– Jeffrey Rex
