Marvel plays a lot with ‘Doctor Strange’: its success will condition the franchise in the medium term

Box office expectations for ‘Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness’ are excellent. In the 20 markets where it has already been released, it has far exceeded the results of both ‘The Batman’ and the first ‘Doctor Strange’, remaining only a little behind the overwhelming ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’. At the time of writing these lines has already raised almost 140 million dollarswhich reinforce the excellent expectations for the film, which some analysts put at a very noticeable $229.3 million for its first week of release worldwidemore than covering your estimated budget.

The sequel to ‘Doctor Strange’ has a number of considerable challenges ahead of it, however. Marvel wants it to be an overwhelming success, and the reasons go beyond the merely economic: there is a lot of strategy for the future of the MCU and issues related to the image of the franchise at stake. We’ve looked at the strategic importance of the movie and here are the seven reasons Disney needs it to become a hit.

1- Clean up the accounts.

Marvel is a long way from being in financial trouble. “Shang-Chi” grossed more than $432 million, “Eternals” $400 million and “Black Widow” $379 million, all on budgets of $200. Even counting the expenses in marketing, all comfortably recovered what was invested, and in some cases like ‘Black Widow’, is especially worthy of the dates on which it was released. However, they are far from the 2,798 million collected from ‘Endgame’ or, without going any further, the recent 1,893 million from ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’.

Because we have square numbers of budgets and grosses, but marvel is a giant machine that needs much, much more extra money to keep going. The huge number of projects in pre-production, the monstrous investments in marketing and image… to keep that locomotive rolling, it takes more than a hair’s breadth to recover investments. Those projected more than 200 million dollars of gross for “Doctor Strange 2” in the first week are promising, but it is necessary to go much further.

2- Consolidate the MCU

Phase 4, no one escapes, is proving somewhat hesitant. It is true that, after the point and aside that ‘Endgame’ meant and that well-oiled narrative machine that was Phase 3, the brakes had to be put on. It’s time to rethink the foundations and start laying down clues for a new narrative arc: But from the first hints about Thanos to his reveal as a character, and from there to the climax of his story, literally years passed.

But Phase 4 has encountered an impossible obstacle to avoid, which has been the pandemic, and the break of months and months in filming and premieres that has further distanced the third phase from the fourth. Consequence: that indefatigable rhythm has stopped almost stopping. ‘Black Widow’, which should be a culmination for one of the most beloved characters in the MCU, remained an isolated thing, almost out of its time. And ‘Eternals’ and ‘Shang-Chi’ simply seem like movies outside the MCU, such is their general disconnection with what has already been seen. This sequel to ‘Doctor Strange’ not only allows us to recover a much-loved character from the early stages, but also to reconnect with that narrative verve and start at once.

3.- Lay the foundations of the Multiverse

we do not know yet what are they about the next phases of the MCU. A colossal villain has not been raised, It’s unknown if the Multiverse is going to play a crucial role in the next big Marvel event.. Considering that Kevin Feige and company have just met to start planning the next ten years of the MCU, anything is possible. But the truth is that the Multiverse is becoming more and more relevant.

In the same way that the cold reception of ‘Eternals’ makes the mythology that was presented in the film unlikely to grow much more, the success of the Multiverse makes the projects related to it sprout one after another. At the moment, ‘No Way Home’ and this ‘Multiverse of Madness’, plus the ‘Loki’ and ‘What If…?’ series, already with their second season announced, are focused on the subject. It would be rare that in one way or another it does not appear, even slightly, in the next and already close movie of ‘Thor: Love and Thunder’.

4.- Prove that Disney is the guardian of the one and only true Marvel

Spider-Man is a property that comes with a certain complexity. It is Sony that exploits it, but Marvel has the right for Tom Holland to appear in his films. For practical purposes, the success of his films benefit the MCU, but fans know that it is not Disney who is behind. And no Disney movie has recently grossed as much as “Spider-Man: No Way Home.” Since ‘Endgame’ they have not had a comparable success.

But there is another aspect of the spider-verse that clashes with Marvel: the Spider-Man spin-offs ‘Venom’, ‘Morbius’ and, soon, the Kraven and Sinister Six movies. They are movies with a style and a lack of polish and attention to detail that Disney would never allow. And if the success of ‘No Way Home’ benefits the MCU, the failure of ‘Norbius’ hurts it: it’s the first blemish on Disney’s Marvel… and it’s not even theirs. For this reason, ‘Doctor Strange 2’ has to be a success to establish the style of “the good Marvel”, the genuine one, perfectly distinguishable from that of Sony.

5.- Continue to lead DC

Since DC has abandoned its pretense of setting up a more or less coherent shared universe, things are not going badly for him, especially on the Batman side. ‘Joker’ and ‘The Batman’ have been overwhelming successes with critics and audiences. ‘The Suicide Squad’ did not do very well at the box office, but it has spawned a spin-off, ‘The Peacemaker’, which was very well received by critics. They may not boast as uniform a trajectory as the MCU’s, but the dark days of ‘Justice League’ seem definitely behind them.

Comparing the box office results of Marvel productions with those of DC is absurd, especially since Disney and Sony produce much more, including an almost continuous supply of series on Disney +. But Marvel needs, precisely for that very reason, successes in almost as continuous a proportion. If ‘Doctor Strange 2’ works at the box office, it will make it clear that Marvel continues to reign, for the time being, over DC.

6.- Differentiate from the series

we were talking about the almost continuous rush of series as a feature of Disney’s Marvel, but it’s also a problem. Although the fans receive them like rain in May, and any innovation, no matter how small (such as those of ‘Moon Knight’) is enthusiastically applauded, the truth is that they are products made -never better said- in series and without the care and the creativity of the movies. At least not with the good ones, like ‘Doctor Strange 2’.

And if this sequel is a good opportunity for Marvel to confirm its success over DC, and to make it clear that Sony does Marvel xploitations second, it is also to make your own priorities clear. The series are very good, and so the fans have something to consume between film and film… but there are no series like ‘Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness’. It is very clear, but the box office should endorse it.

7.- Find new creators

Marvel is not exactly short of authors with a hallmark. But where it works best for them is in comedy and demystification: James Gunn and Taika Waititi are right now the directors who best know how to leave their personal mark in the immense machinery of Marvel. But others who have approached that devouring monster of authorial identities that is Disney have been scalded, as is the case of Chloé Zhao, director of ‘Eternals’.

As we mentioned in our review, ‘Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness’ is as much a piece of Raimi as it is of Marvel. It is almost a small miracle that Disney has allowed the film to be soaked by the director’s constants that go back to such un-Marvelite films as ‘Army of Darkness’ or ‘Evil Dead’. That is why the success of this sequel is crucial for Marvel to realize that it is in its best interest to rely more and more on personal visions that know how to turn so many superheroic proposals made with tracing paper.