Yahoo Finance's Allie Canal joins the Live show to break down the 'Doctor Strange' box office opening.

Video Transcript

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- The blockbuster summer movie season off to a magical start with Marvel's "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness" conjuring up the biggest opening weekend thus far in 2022. For more on this, let's bring in Yahoo Finance's Allie Canal.

And Allie, it's funny that I said magic. Sorcery, maybe strictly speaking. I don't know. I don't know what the definitions are in the multiverse.

ALLIE CANAL: Yeah. Whatever it is, Julie, it seems to be working because Marvel has absolutely done it again. "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness" opened at number one this past weekend, grossing $185 million in its domestic debut. That's the highest domestic opening weekend of 2022 and the second biggest opening weekend of the pandemic era, right behind "Spider-man, No Way Home."

The film also performed very well internationally, generating an additional 265 million overseas. That brings the global haul to 450 million. And just for a little context here, estimates have placed the sequel to gross at least 160 million. The first Doctor Strange movie, which debuted in 2016 generated 85 million in its domestic debut. So on all fronts, this is a huge win and a really big boost of confidence to theater chains.

There's been a lot of stops and starts amid the pandemic, a lot of bottlenecks in terms of the content. But we finally seem to be in a really good position heading into the summer. We have some really big blockbuster titles like "Top Gun Maverick," the new Thor movie once again leaning into these action-packed type films, also some family friendly titles like "Minions" and "Lightyear."

And these have really been the dominating genres in this post-pandemic world. These are the types of audiences that are returning to theaters right now. But I do think it's still worth noting that we're not back to quote unquote "normal" in terms of traffic and overall theatrical attendance.

And I wonder if we ever will be. That's not to say that the theater is dead. Certainly, there's an appetite there. But behaviors have changed. So now that we're getting more towards a normal content slate for this summer, I'm curious how that's going to translate into the foot traffic and whether or not we're going to see those pre-pandemic numbers that are coming out.

But you were just talking about Disney earnings, Netflix. There's been a lot of talk of streamers potentially releasing more films in theaters. Maybe there's a way for these two mediums to work together and help each other out in the process.

So I do think we're going to have a lot of answers at the end of this summer to a lot of questions that are happening right now in terms of the content world and this new age that we're operating within. But for now, this movie "Doctor Strange," a very big win for the summer.