Despite Marvel’s best efforts, 2017 was very much a DC year. Sure, Justice League may have (spectacularly) failed to set the world alight, but the combined critical and audience reception for Women Woman comprehensively outweighed anything that the Marvel Cinematic Universe had to offer last year. 2018 though, is a very different affair, with a certain member of the Wakandan Royal Family breaking a mind-bending number of film records in only it’s first week of release. Black Panther.
Whatever your feelings on the various racial arguments associated with the movie’s release, or the spectacularly stupid antics of people trying so desperately to undermine it, there’s no denying that Black Panther is more than just a two hour film. It’s an event, on par with the original Star Wars, Lord Of The Rings and Harry Potter offerings. Quite simply, the entire face of cinema has now been quite subtly altered by its arrival.
Which is a fact perhaps best evidenced by in the film’s financial and critical achievements to date. We’re only a week of screenings into Black Panther’s theatrical run, and it’s managed to go and break a total of EIGHT existing cinematic records. Never mind how much money it will go on to take in the long run, or how many awards it may garner, it’s already the stuff of legend. And here’s why:
It’s the highest rated Marvel Movie of all time…
The last couple of years have seen a huge rise in the significance and influence of the Rotten Tomatoes aggregate site. Audiences now no longer hang on the word of movie critics alone, with a number of recently divisive releases highlighting the huge gulf between the opinions of the press, and those of the general public.
If you take the time to park the Marvel/DC conspiracy theory about the website, which is a raging debate that has shown no sign so far of dying down, at the time of writing this the rating for Black Panther is 97%. Prior to this, Iron Man held the title for the most popular Marvel movie with a score of 94. Black Panther’s achievement is an impressive development, with not even Logan having managed to budge the first ever MCU movie, falling just short at a 93% rating.
In fact, it’s also the highest rated superhero movie as well…
Now it’s entirely possible that after a week or two, that score of 98 is going to drop a little bit, but so far it’s been fairly consistent. The highest rated superhero movie from any studio on the review site prior to this week was The Incredibles, which had settled at a rather impressive rating of 97%.
For all its bells and whistles, Wonder Woman topped off at 94%, so not only is Black Panther already the highest audience-rated Marvel flick, but as of this week it’s the best rated superhero movie too. It’ll now be even more intriguing to see how Incredibles 2 fares later on this year…
It’s had the most pre-sale tickets of any superhero movie…
Moving away from all of the audience love, and into the slightly more technical arena of Box Office sales, Black Panther has also been setting a couple of new benchmarks in the area of presale ticket orders. Fandango are currently tacking the movie for a domestic opening weekend of $170m. This huge figure easily outstrips the existing comic-book movie record of $166m, which was set back in 2016 by Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.
Moving beyond and outside that genre, the movie had also had greater pre-sales for a firestorm quarter movie than any other in the Jan-Mar bracket. That’s fairly impressive given that it’s a category that includes blockbusters such as the original Hunger Games movie, and last year’s live-action Beauty and the Beast remake.
Oh, and also the biggest number of IMAX pre-sales too…
In addition to breaking a number of records around conventional ticket sales, Black Panther has also already smashed existing records for IMAX pre-sales. That’s for Marvel movies and others. Well, at least until Infinity War comes along, anyway….
Then there’s those February Thursday pre-sales…
Black Panther’s domestic preview screening sales amounted to an impressive $25.2m. This more than doubles the previous record of $12.7m which Deadpool set just two years ago.
In fact, moving outside of the February bracket, the film has managed to achieve the second highest total for Thursday preview screenings of all the MCU movies. It successfully traveled up past Civil War (25m), but couldn’t quite topple Age Of Ultron, which still sits pretty with preview sales of $27m.
And having the best overall opening weekend of any February…
That 25m in Thursday screenings was only the start, and the movie’s overall domestic takings for last weekend topped off at a staggering $201.7m. Once again, the defeated previous record holder turned out to be Deadpool, with 132.4m.
To put that figure into some kind of perspective, the biggest ever opening weekends on record are all recent franchise entries: The Force Awakens (247.96m), The Last Jedi (220m) and Jurassic World (208.8m). The MCU record (perhaps unsurprisingly) remains with The Avengers (207.4m).
Oh, and the biggest Monday box office record too…
With the Thursday preview sales banked. and the weekend ticket totals being counted up. Black Panther continues to go from strength to strength. The movie’s Monday screening sales are also now a significant milestone, scoring a record-breaking total of $40.17m.
In terms of second place, this is the record that Black Panther has now taken by the smallest of margins of the list. Once again, the record had been held by The Force Awakens, which had bagged Monday sales of 40.11m. Third place finds another Star Wars flick. Rogue One, with 32m.
And finally, best ever opening for a black film director…
Building on the successes of Fruitvale Station, and Creed, Director Ryan Coogler is now on of the most successful directors currently working in Hollywood. His ethnicity has been seen as a crucial reason for the film’s engagement with black cinema-goers, but how have other African-American directors fared prior to him coming along?
The previous record holder was Straight Outta Compton director, the spectacularly named F. Gary Gray. He guided the 8th entry in the Fast/Furious franchise to a 98m opening…
Black Panther is currently playing in theaters everywhere.