‘Black Panther’ has now officially had the second-highest grossing opening weekend of a Marvel Superhero movie, trailing only the 2012 ‘Avengers’. The new superhero movie brought in 192 million dollars over a three day period, justifying the enormous hype which had been building around the movie prior to its release.
No other movie came close to ‘Black Panther’ over the weekend, with ‘Peter Rabbit’ and ‘Fifty Shades Freed’ each bringing in around 17 million dollars, and ‘Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle’ pulling in another 8 million. New releases over the weekend included the animated ‘Early Man’ and biblical epic ‘Sampson’, which made 3.2 million and 2 million.
‘Black Panther’ now boasts the 5th highest opening weekend gross of all time, trailing only ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’, ‘Star Wars: The Last Jedi’, ‘Jurassic World’, and ‘Marvel’s the Avengers’. Marvel Superhero movies now hold 5 of the top 10 spots in opening three day gross, with ‘Avengers: Age of Ultron’, ‘Captain America: Civil War’ and ‘Iron Man 3’ coming in at 6, 7 and 9 respectively.
With such a strong opening weekend, it’s clear that ‘Black Panther’ will likely break the billion dollar mark in overall gross sales, making it the latest crown jewel in the Marvel Cinematic Universe franchise.
What’s arguably even more impressive about ‘Black Panther’s’ success is that the movie was released in the month of February, not traditionally the peak time for releasing big budget superhero franchise movies. ‘Black Panther’ easily shatters the previous February opening weekend record set by ‘Deadpool’, surpassing ‘Deadpool’s’ opening gross by around sixty million dollars.
In addition to bringing in such strong box office gross revenue, ‘Black Panther’ is a hit with critics, generating a 97% Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes and an A+ Metacritic score.
‘Black Panther’ was notable as the first major superhero movie to feature a black superhero, as well as the first superhero movie directed by a black director, Ryan Coogler.
Set in a fictional, technologically advanced African nation of Wakanda, ‘Black Panther’ tells the story of T’Challa, played by Chadwick Boseman, who returns to Wakanda to take the mantle of leadership. Also starring Michael B. Jordan, Lupita Nyong’o, Danai Gurira, Martin Freeman, Daniel Kaluuya and Andy Serkis, ‘Black Panther’s’ story remained mostly distinct from the already established Marvel Superheroes featured in previous films.
With the runaway success of ‘Black Panther’, look for Marvel to fold characters from Wakanda into the Avengers and other crossover Marvel Cinematic Universe movies.
