One of the worst box office slumps on record was over the weekend, with Disney's "Black Panther" taking in a stellar $180 million at North American cinemas.
The superhero sequel made an extra $150 million overseas.
The movie industry was less celebratory when the first "Black Panther" came out in February of last year. It sold $202 million in tickets at domestic theaters in its first weekend, shattering a Hollywood myth about the international viability of movies with mostly Black casts.
The box office has been slow to recover from the swine flu. According to Comscore, ticket sales in the US and Canada are down from the same period in 2019. In the 21 years since the 9/11 attacks, this was the worst October for Hollywood because of the coronaviruses.
Cineworld, the company that owns the movie theater chain in the US, has filed for Chapter 11. Disney began a cost-cutting campaign that will include layoffs and a thorough review of the company's content and marketing spending.
The large turnout for the event was not a panacea.
The movie, which cost an estimated $250 million to produce and at least another $100 million to market, played in over 4,000 theaters. A record for a November opening was set at large-format IMAX theaters, where domestic ticket sales of $14.2 million were for the movie "Wakanda" IMAX's chief executive said the chain's results were equally robust overseas.
David A. Gross is a film consultant who publishes a subscription The first movie to take in $191.3 million was "Avengers: Age of Ultron". In May, "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness" came in at $187.4 million.
Mr. Gross thinks that "Wakanda" should dominate moviegoing through Thanksgiving and into December. He noted that the film received an A grade in exit polls and that reviews were overwhelmingly positive. The first film received an A.
The first film's charismatic star, Chadwick Boseman, who died in 2020 of colon cancer, has been the focus of much of the conversation around "Wakanda FOREVER" He had kept his illness a secret. Ryan Coogler decided not to change Mr. Boseman's character in the sequel and instead made it an action-packed meditation on loss and grief. The sequel brought back two of the first film's supporting actresses.
Early Oscar buzz has been generated by Ms. Bassett's performance. It would be the first time that an actor from a film would win an Oscar.
Disney marketers made sure that the movie was a hit. The cast walked red carpets at the premiere in New York, Los Angeles, London, Mexico City and Lagos, Nigeria as a result of the studio's marketing chief, Asad Ayaz. In the US, ABC's morning show, "Good Morning America," covered the film for a week. The National Basketball Association and Mcdonald's were among the promotional partners.
The singer recorded her first solo music in six years for the movie.
It seems that the strong results are good news for the box office. Some people believed that Kevin Feige had spread himself too thin because of the soft results for "Eternals" and the expansion of Disney+.
All three of the theatrical releases from Marvel have been huge hits. The movie "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness" sold nearly a billion dollars in tickets. The movie, which did not play in Russia and China, collected over a billion dollars in July.
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