Black Panther: Wakanda Forever has dominated the box office, as the film will pull in $180M over the weekend. Cinemas have been waiting for a project to finally give them a boost, especially after Black Adam was a more mellow premiere, and it has arrived. Not only that, the film has now taken the record of the highest November opening from Hunger Games. Catching Fire, which stood at $158M since 2013. The film will also end its global release at around $330M.
It’s a sigh of relief for Marvel Studios, as there were a lot of troubles facing this production. It had to film during COVID, Letitia Wright suffered an injury that halted production, and it lost its main star when Chadwick Boseman suddenly passed away forcing the production into a new direction. It also can’t rely on an international bo office with markets like China, Russia, and Ukraine not available for understandable reasons. It’ll likely not pass the original’s $1.4B worldwide release but it could have a chance at inching its way towards a billion if its A CinemaScore gives it some much-needed word-of-mouth.
The film stands as the second biggest opening for Marvel Studios this year, as it passed Thor: Love and Thunder but is behind Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, which goes against early projection. Though these two films had the summer market to play with and the Doctor Strange sequel was heavily frontloaded. If Wakanda Forever doesn’t face a harsh drop in its second weekend, especially with it not sharing the B+ CinemaScore, it could have a chance to potentially surpass that film’s box office in the long run. Though it might be safer to say it’ll reach at least 800M and grow from there. Still, this is the fourth-highest superhero movie opening and it doesn’t seem like Marvel Studios is slowing down any second. Of course, the second weekend is the only one that could really tell if that’ll be the case.
