Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is looking like it’s set to conquer the box office on opening weekend. Early projections estimate that Black Panther 2 is set to bring in $175-185 million domestically, and between $335-365M worldwide. That’s definitely a much-needed break from the box office slump the movie industry has been slogging through since September – even if it doesn’t meet the same bar as recent Marvel movie releases. For comparison, Spider-Man: No way Home earned $568 million in its opening weekend (including a record-breaking domestic weekend opening), and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness earned $429M.
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MORE: Black Panther 2 – What Critics Are Saying
Deadline’s breakdown also predicts that Black Panther 2 will have staying power at the box office. A look at the upcoming release state indicates that Wakanda Forever will largely go unchallenged as a blockbuster franchise film until Disney returns again with Avatar: The Way of Water on December 16th. In the modern theater industry, a month-long run for a highly-anticipated Marvel film is a good thing to have.
The original Black Panther opened to $202 million at the domestic box office upon its release in February 2018. That was a milestone opening for a February movie, and it was somewhat surprising to see just how big of a box office and cultural zeitgeist fixation Black Panther became. The director (Ryan Coogler) wasn’t a major box office draw (though a cult-hit star), and even Chadwick Boseman’s name wasn’t so big to guarantee he could carry a Marvel franchise film. But Black Panther ended up running strong in theaters for weeks on end, all the way to $1.3 billion worldwide.
Comparatively, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever has the much sadder milestone of marking Chadwick Boseman’s death (from cancer in 2020), as well as retiring the character of T’Challa within the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It’s safe to say that no one can fully predict a model for how viewers will react and/or turn out for this: could the shadow of Boseman’s passing keep some people away? It’s not the same case as with, say, Heath Ledger’s performance as Joker bringing people out to see The Dark Knight after his death: Black Panther 2 is all about grieving the loss, before moving on to a whole new era of high-fantasy Marvel Cinematic Universe storylines.
NEXT: Black Panther: Wakanda Forever Official Review
Source: Deadline
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever will be in theaters on November 11th.
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Image Courtesy of New Line Cinema
