Everyone’s favorite time lord has conquered the US box office. A special nationwide screening of the Doctor Who 50th anniversary special, entitled The Day of the Doctor, managed to gross an incredible $4.8 million in just one night.
The Day of the Doctor, which runs for 75 minutes, screened in just 660 cinemas as a one-off event on Monday night and saw 320,000 tickets sold, averaging $7,155 per location; in fact, on Monday night the cult British science fiction series special was the number two film in the whole of the United States, behind only The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, and grossed almost as much as the 3D run of The Wizard of Oz did earlier this year in its entire run ($5.5 million in total) and outstripped indie favorite Much Ado About Nothing at $4.3 million and the disastrous bomb that was The Fifth Estate ($3.3 million).
The effort is even more impressive given that the great majority of fans would already have seen it, with the TV special having screened on BBC America on Saturday 23rd November – the actual date of the show’s 50th anniversary.
“It’s incredible that Doctor Who has made history once again, setting record numbers across the board on BBC America, in social media, and now in theaters,” says the executive vice-president for home entertainment and licensing for BBC America, Soumya Sriraman. On TV the show broke records too, achieving BBC America’s highest-ever recorded figures for the special’s Saturday screening.
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