Beyond Spider-Man: No Way Home, Doctor Strange 2 Pre-sale Ticket Reaches Over 400K In South Korea

Benedict Cumberbatch dalam film "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness" (Imdb)

JAKARTA - Pre-sale tickets for the film Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness in South Korea had sold 410,000 tickets as of Friday as of 9 a.m. local time, according to data from the Korean Film Council (KOFIC).

The Marvel Studios film will be released on Wednesday in South Korea and is predicted to dominate the box office considering that pre-sale tickets surpassed Spider-Man: No Way Home in the country, Yonhap quoted Antara from Friday.

Doctor Strange 2 accounted for 78.8 percent of all tickets booked in the same period, beating Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore which only reached 5.9 percent and Korean drama I Want to Know Your Parents with 3.4 percent.

The number of Doctor Strange 2 tickets sold also exceeded Spider-Man's 348,000 pre-sale tickets three days before its release last December. In the end Spider-Man garnered more than 7.5 million moviegoers, becoming the most-watched film during the COVID-19 pandemic in South Korea.

Starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Elizabeth Olsen, the sequel to "Doctor Strange" follows the adventures of Dr. Stephen Strange fights a terrifying threat that looms over humanity and the entire universe across the Multiverse.

Doctor Strange 2 is the first blockbuster action film to be released in South Korea since the country eased social distancing restrictions in theaters, including a ban on eating in theaters, last week. The policy is expected to attract local film fans back to theaters.

South Korea is known for its love of superhero films, given the many Marvel franchises that have topped the country's box office, including Avengers: Endgame (2019) which was South Korea's biggest foreign film hit with 13.9 million viewers.