The MCU has had a strong start to 2022 with the premiere of the highly anticipated Moon Knight series just last week. However, what many Marvel fans cannot stop talking about is the next movie in the timeline Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. The film is less than a month away from its release and tickets finally went on sale on April 6. It looks like this ambitious sequel is off to a great start as Doctor Strange 2 just had the best first day of pre-sales for 2022 to date on Fandango’s website.
During the first 24 hours, the sequel sold more tickets than any other film this year and the website saw a huge number of fans reserve their seats. Showtimes sold out fast, which caused movie theaters to schedule additional screenings to meet the high demand. This is all impressive given that 2022 has had a great lineup of films so far. Doctor Strange 2 beat films like Scream, Uncharted, Sonic the Hedgehog 2, and The Batman, the latter of which has made over $700 million at the box office so far. The original Doctor Strange made $677 million worldwide and, by the look of these first-day sales alone, the sequel may blow that out of the water.
Doctor Strange 2’s ticket sales is the best pre-sale day for Fandango since Spider-Man: No Way Home tickets went on sale in late November of last year. Now this is only one website, but it is one of the biggest ticket sites in the United States and many other sites like AMC or Atom Tickets have had similar results. Some sites have even crashed due to the high demand.
'Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness' IMAX Poster Hints at Characters to Appear.
So what does this all mean? For starters, this sequel is riding high off the wave of No Way Home. That film feeds directly into Multiverse of Madness with Strange opening up the Multiverse — and fans having their dreams come true with the amazing return of Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield’s Spider-Man. The various trailers have teased even more potential surprises with the voice of Patrick Stewart’s Professor X seemingly being heard in the last trailer. Who else appears in this sequel is anyone's guess. After No Way Home anything is possible. Characters we thought we would never see again like Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine or Ben Affleck’s Daredevil are now a compelling possibility.
However, beyond the endless story possibilities, probably the reason most hardcore fans are excited about this film is the return of director Sam Raimi. The director of the original Spider-Man trilogy and The Evil Dead trilogy brings his unique eye to the MCU. We have already gotten a glimpse of his distinct visual style throughout the various trailers. With multiple versions of Doctor Strange and Scarlet Witch running around, including a zombie version of Strange seen in What If…?, this seems like the perfect film for Raimi to make his Marvel return.
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness stars Benedict Cumberbatch, Elizabeth Olsen, Xochitl Gomez, Rachel McAdams, Benedict Wong, and Chiwetel Ejiofor. Tickets are on sale now for when gargantuan sequel hits theaters on May 6, 2022.