ATLANTA, GA - NOVEMBER 10: General view during "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever" Screening at Regal Atlantic Station on November 10, 2022 in Atlanta, Georgia.(Photo by Prince Williams/Wireimage)
As they say, numbers don’t lie. And according to the global $330 million that Black Panther: Wakanda Forever’ pulled in this weekend, the film is a sequel that understood the assignment!
According to Disney, the film earned $180 million of its global sales from support in North America, per CNN. The opening was the highest-grossing debut in November EVER. This means Wakanda Forever snatched the slot that The Hunger Games: Catching Fire secured in 2013 with their $158 million debut. Wakanda Forever is only a few million below the $202 million debut weekend of its 2018 first installment.
The box office win comes after the Marvel story faced significant challenges in its return to the big screen. Fans worried how the creative team would handle the storyline after Chadwick Boseman, who played King T’Challa and Black Panther in the 2018 film, passed away in 2020 from colon cancer. He was 43 years old.
Kevin Feige, head of Marvel Studios, told Empire magazine in September that director and co-writer Ryan Coogler poured the reality of Chadwick’s passing into the world of Wakanda.
“It just felt like it was much too soon to recast,” Feige said. “Stan Lee always said that Marvel represents the world outside your window. And we had talked about how, as extraordinary and fantastical as our character and stories are, there’s a relatable and human element to everything we do. The world is still processing the loss of Chad. And Ryan poured that into the story.”
In the sequel, Wakandans are processing the loss of King T’Challa, whose death is attributed to an unspecified illness. It serves almost as a tribute to the late actor. Co-star Lupita Nyong’o spoke about filming Wakanda Forever without Boseman.
“For us as a cast, having lost our king, Chadwick Boseman, that was a lot to process, and in many ways, we’re still processing it. When you love someone, I don’t know when you stop missing them. And of course, we felt it so much, making this film without him,” Lupita told Hollywood Reporter in July. She added, “It was very therapeutic. It restored a sense of hope for me in making it, and I think we’ve expanded the world of Wakanda in a way that will blow people’s minds–not just Wakanda, but the ‘Black Panther’ world.”
The film pushed through despite reworking the script, managing Covid-19 restrictions, and Letitia Wright‘s fractured shoulder set injury. In her interview, Lupita added that the two-hours-and-forty-minute sequel will “blow people’s minds.”
Here’s what folks on Twitter have already said about the $250 million production! Meanwhile, Wakanda Forever is holding at 84 percent on Rotten Tomatoes’ tomatometer and a 95 percent audience score.
