Doctor Strange 2 tops US box office for third week as Top Gun looms

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Marvel‘s Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness was the top-earning US film of the weekend for the third consecutive week, according to studio estimates.

Figures showed that the movie earnt a total of $31.6m (£25.2m) across 4,534 North American theatres on the weekend beginning Friday (20 May), as global box office earnings crossed the $800m (£637.6m) mark.

Sam Raimi’s Doctor Strange 2 was the first Marvel release this year, and follows the success of Tom Holland’s Spider-Man: No Way Home in December 2021.

Doctor Strange 2, starring Benedict Cumberbatch in the title role of Dr Stephen Strange, is likely to be displaced by Tom Cruise’sTop Gun: Maverick upon its release on Friday 27 May – nearly 40 years since the original.

During his whirlwind appearance at the Cannes film festival last week, where Top Gun: Maverick had its European premiere, Cruise was asked whether he had considered debuting the sequel on streaming platforms when the pandemic continued pushing back its release date.

“That was not going to happen ever,” Cruise said. “I make movies for the big screen.”

Following Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness on the list, Downtown Abbey: A New Era took $16m in ticket sales from 3,820 theaters across the region on its opening weekend,

Holdover family films The Bad Guys and Sonic the Hedgehog took the third and fourth spots, with the former earning $6.1m (£4.8m) in its fifth week. Sonic 2 earned $3.9m (£3.1m) in the seventh week since its release.

Meanwhile, Everything Everywhere All At Once is still going strong even nine weeks after its release. The A24 film picked up an additional $3.3m this weekend – down only six per cent from the previous weekend – taking its total earnings to $47m (£37.4m)

Additional reporting by Associated Press.