The first Marvel superhero film with a predominantly black cast has won rave reviews and is expected to smash box office records. It’s also been hailed as a cultural moment for the representation of black characters in Hollywood.
Black Panther will have surpassed many of Marvel’s mightiest on the all-time chart. Black Panther is now looking at the 6th best opening of all-time on a 3-day-basis with an estimated $187.6M per industry projections and a mind-blowing $216M over four days.
How much do moviegoers love Black Panther? The Ryan Coogler-directed movie has set social media on fire as people leave the theatre. Twitter hashtags for #BlackPanther and @TheBlackPanther have set an all-time movie record since Thursday night with 559K unique Twitter posts in one day (100K per day is exceptional) – and that’s over twice what the social media monitor saw with #LastJedi which peaked out at 232K in a day back in December.
Black Panther had a presence at New York Fashion Week on Feb. 13, working with such renegade designers as Cushnie Et Ochs, Ikiré Jones, Tome, Sophie Theallet, Fear of God, Chromat, and Laquan Smith who created custom pieces inspired by the film.
Black Panther is a cultural milestone, becoming the highest-grossing title to star a Black ensemble cast. It will also be a record-breaking opening for an African-American director.
Director Ryan Coogler begins Black Panther in the aftermath of 2016’s Captain America: Civil War, a story that introduced Wakanda into the wider Marvel Cinematic Universe. In that film, Prince T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman), the aforementioned supersuit-wearing royal, takes on the mantle of Wakanda’s king after his father, T’Chaka, is killed in a bombing. T’Challa is also the holder of the hereditary role of “Black Panther,” a post empowered by a combination of divine blessing, biological enhancement, and cutting-edge technology. He is, in layman’s terms, a superhero with a bulletproof suit made from vibranium, the strongest substance in the Marvel universe and the stuff that Captain America’s shield is made of. And he also has very sharp claws.
Black Panther picks up where Civil War leaves off. T’Challa is finding his footing as the new king in the aftermath of his father’s death. Among his Wakandan countrymen and retinue are a number of remarkably fleshed-out characters with complex relationships, and a veritable who’s who of black actors, including Letitia Wright as his sister Shuri; Lupita Nyong’o as his ex-flame Nakia; Danai Gurira as Okoye, the head of his all-women bodyguard; and Daniel Kaluuya as his best friend W’Kabi.In almost every facet of production, from wardrobe and costume design to the film’s score, Coogler’s Black Panther takes that thread of power and spins it into a diaspora’s fantasy. One perhaps more controversial element of the film is how Wakanda itself must be built out of whole cloth by borrowing from a spread of distinct and very different African cultures.
Even many of its on-screen denizens are played by actors not born in Africa – a fact betrayed by their inconsistent accents. But the cast does reflect the incredible breadth of the African diaspora. Gurira is the daughter of Zimbabwean immigrants to Iowa, Nyong’o was born in Mexico to Kenyan parents and then later raised in Kenya, Kaluuya is the son of Ugandan immigrants to London, and Wright and Winston Duke (who plays M’Baku, a key rival of T’Challa’s) were born in Guyana and Tobago, respectively.
Because Black Panther marks such an unprecedented moment that excitement for the film feels almost kinetic. Black Panther parties are being organized, pre- and post-film soirées for fans new and old. A video of young Atlanta students dancing in their classroom once they learned they were going to see the film together went viral in early February.
Oscar winner Octavia Spencer announced on her Instagram account that she’ll be in Mississippi when Black Panther opens and that she plans to buy out a theater “in an underserved community there to ensure that all our brown children can see themselves as a superhero.”
Many civil rights pioneers and other trailblazing forebears have received lavish cinematic treatments, in films including Malcolm X, Selma and Hidden Figures. But Black Panther matters more, because this film is our best chance for people of every colour to see a black hero.
Photo Credit: Getty
