Black Panther, Marvels Studios’ latest superhero film, has spent its opening weekend shattering box office records. As of this writing Monday afternoon, projections place the film taking in $201.8 million at the domestic box office over its first three days of release and over $235 million for this four-day, President’s Day weekend.
Additionally, the film sold another $169 million in tickets overseas this weekend, bringing its worldwide box office take for the weekend to $404 million.
Black Panther‘s three day total of $201.8 million places the film as the fifth largest domestic opening of all time. It’s four-day total places it in the number three position of top four-day opening weekends right behind Star Wars: The Last Jedi ($241.6 million) and Star Wars: The Force Awakens ($288.1 million). Black Panther also handily beat the previous record for biggest February opening weekend which was held by Deadpool, which earned $152.2 million when it premiered over the four-day Presidents Day weekend in 2016.
The Ryan Coogler-directed film is outperforming even the most optimistic of box office projections. When the first estimates for the film’s opening weekend came out nearly three weeks ago, box office prognosticators placed the film’s weekend take around $120 million. But as the film’s release grew closer, those forecasts were continually upgraded until as recently as last week, when the box office prediction was adjusted up to $165 million.
Those adjustments continued through the week as word of mouth fueled even more ticket sales. Just yesterday, it was thought the film would top out at $192 million at the box office for the three-day weekend and $218 million for the four-day weekend. Do not be surprised if the box office receipts are adjusted upwards again once final reporting comes in tomorrow.
Additionally, Black Panther received a CinemaScore of A+, the first Marvel Studios film to earn the highest rating on the theater-point-of-exit polling company’s ranking system since 2012’s The Avengers. With such an indication of positive audience reaction, it is easy to assume that word of mouth helped to push the box office higher than predicted as the weekend progressed.
