It’s safe to say that Black Panther exceeded everyone’s expectations at the box office.
Just three months ago, I was taking a look at the film’s projections and concluded that it might struggle to do as well as Wonder Woman and that it looked on track to have “a slightly bigger opening weekend than Doctor Strange and Ant-Man.” Well, it’s left those movies in the dust and gone on to achieve the mind-blowing feat of being one of Marvel Studios’ most financially successful efforts to date.
To be more precise, the film has just crossed the $650 million mark at the domestic box office, being one of only five movies in cinema history to achieve this milestone. It also stayed at the top of the charts for five straight weeks, seeing off all competition until finally being unseated by Pacific Rim Uprising. This excellent domestic performance is only buoyed up even more by its international success, combining to bring in a stupendous $1.27 billion.
It can’t be stated too much how impressive this is. For one, the character was fairly obscure until his debut in Captain America: Civil War, and even there he was hardly the focus of the movie. For another, the film released in February, traditionally a release window in which studios dispatch the movies they don’t have confidence in. And finally, it shattered the false preconceptions that audiences (and particularly global audiences) simply wouldn’t turn up to see a pic with a predominantly black cast. On top of all that, it’s simply a fantastic film.
For all those reasons, Black Panther is going to go down in cinematic history. If you’d have told me back in 2017 that Avengers: Infinity War might not be the highest grossing Marvel Studios movie of 2018, I’ve had thought you were deluded. Now, that’s looking all too plausible.