Just when you think BLACK PANTHER couldn’t blow your mind any more than it has, out comes another astounding piece of news. After weekend box office reports came out saying PANTHER’s three-day total would come to $192 million, the universe took that as a challenge and guided even more people to the theaters. Now, the movie’s weekend total has jumped up nearly $10 million to $201.8 million, making it the fifth movie ever to cross the mark after three days.
The last-minute surge at the box office is the result of an explosive Sunday turnout resulting in $60 million, making it the second-largest Sunday total ever after STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS ($60.5 million). As a result, the current four-day projections for PANTHER are now at $235 million, up from about $210 million only days ago. Given what PANTHER has been able to accomplish so far it will likely hit that massive four-day total by the end of the day, giving it the biggest four-day total of any Marvel movie. In fact, should it perform even better, it will defeat LAST JEDI’s four-day haul of $241 million, having only FORCE AWAKENS ahead of it.
Not only has PANTHER shred and devoured the previous February record held by DEADPOOL, but now it’s defeating some of the biggest Marvel heavyweights by major margins. Though these superhero movies have a tendency to be frontloaded, PANTHER has already tapped into pop culture in a major way, and given its next competition isn’t until WRINKLE IN TIME on March 9, PANTHER could find its way to out-grossing virtually every superhero movie ever (except maybe AVENGERS. That’s a big number).
Every day a new number comes out that shocks me, and PANTHER is performing wildly better than I, and surely many others, believed it would. The Marvel brand indeed helped these numbers, but there are plenty of people who are turning out who may not be the biggest, most die hard MCU fans. Seeing such a massive movie starring a black ensemble, directed by a black filmmaker, is a big deal for so many Americans who haven't seen themselves represented in a blockbuster of this scale, and it's causing a flooding of theaters nationwide. It's for this reason the movie will have legs beyond other comic book movies, and I've said before, the king is only just starting to conquer.
BLACK PANTHER is in theaters now.