Box Office Breakdown: Doctor Strange Continues Marvel's Magical Win Streak

Writing about Marvel Studios can make you feel like a broken record.  Going back to the beginning of their cinematic output, every new Marvel release brings with it speculation that this might finally be the one to break their streak of hits.  Before they announced themselves as a formidable box-office force with Iron Man, many pundits thought the armor-clad billionaire was too obscure to hit it big.  Whats more, hiring Robert Downey Jr., although now obviously an inspired choice, was seen as incredibly risky.  Setting up individual heroes and then collecting them in their own super-team of cinematic blockbusters, as with The Avengers, also felt risky.  Breaking away from their established superhero hits to introduce a menagerie of virtually unknown characters, like Guardians of the Galaxy or Ant-Man, looked insane.  Spending $165 million on a weird magically psychedelic origin movie for a hero most people don't recognize, as they did with Doctor Strange, seemed downright ludicrous.

Risk is the common thread here, and also one of the reasons Marvel has been able to feel fresh and interesting while still following a somewhat formulaic model for superhero origin films.  And with every risk that pays off, studio president Kevin Feige looks like more of a genius.  While the studio could so easily churn out sequels to their existing properties for decades and rake in billions as they burn off the fumes of their original creativity, Feige adamantly refuses to become complacent.  He has an ambitious vision for how the Marvel Cinematic Universe should ultimately look, and at this point, until that's completely realized, I know better than to question his or the studio's choices.

All of this Marvel talk is completely side-stepping a major factor in the generally great box-office performance for the weekend: escapism.  More than likely, people feeling the country-wide stress surrounding the upcoming election sought out movies to make them forget about the partisan accusations and political posturing, if only for a few hours.  This led to better than predicted totals for most of the top movies this weekend. 

A few other notes:

• In an interesting bit of counter-programming, the animated musical Trolls scored a cool $45 million, which would be pretty great if the movie hadn't inexplicably cost $125 million.
• Mel Gibson's return to the director's chair, Hacksaw Ridge, performed relatively admirably, but the real test of Gibson's redemption will come at Oscar time. 
• Madea...nuff said.
• Inferno is tortured into fifth with an abysmal $6.25 million.  Even taking into account the overseas markets, this will likely be the last Langdon adventure we see with Howard, Hanks and company.
• Finally, In a surprising move, The Accountant lost less than 30% of its audience compared to last weekend and sucker-punched past Jack Reacher.

Check out the full estimated top ten*:

1. Doctor Strange - $84.9 million
2. Trolls - $45.6 million
3. Hacksaw Ridge - $14.75 million
4. Boo! A Madea Halloween - $7.8 million
5. Inferno - $6.25 million
6. The Accountant - $5.9 million
7. Jack Reacher: Never Go Back - $5.5 million
8. Ouija: Origin of Evil - $3.9 million
9. The Girl on the Train - $2.7 million
10. Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children - $2.1 million

Wide-releases coming next week: Arrival, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, Almost Christmas, Shut-in.

*Box-office stats courtesy of boxofficemojo.com.