If you haven’t heard: Black Panther is already one of the biggest movies of recent years. It exceeded sizable expectations in its opening weekend, making nearly $100 million more than predicted. It has now delivered the biggest opening week of any Marvel movie ever—including The Avengers.
Black Panther’s domestic total for its first seven days brings it to $292 million, per Variety, $22 million more than The Avengers made in its first week back in 2012. It’s also made $228 million internationally for a $520 million worldwide total. Normally, movies in this class experience a 45 percent to 55 percent drop in ticket sales, which would indicate that its second weekend would make Black Panther around $83 million to $95 million. There remains, of course, every chance that the movie might beat these expectations, too.
The week before Black Panther opened, it was predicted that, with ticket pre-sales, the movie might make $120 million in its first few days over the President’s Day holiday weekend, which would have been nothing to sneeze at. The movie made $218 million, the biggest opening for a black director ever, and the biggest February debut of all time. It’s a huge success for Marvel Studios already, and, with an audience demographic that was 37 percent black, singlehandedly defies the Hollywood myth that blockbusters must cater to audiences that are white and male to turn a profit.
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