Weekend Box Office: ‘Black Panther’ Is the Biggest Superhero Movie EVER
The bad news: Black Panther’s reign at the top of the weekend box office chart is over. The good news: Black Panther still made $16.6 million from Friday to Sunday, and that brought its domestic total to $630.9 million. That makes it not only the biggest Marvel Cinematic Universe movie; that makes it the biggest superhero movie ever (EVER!) in the United States. Truly incredible.
Here’s the full box office chart:
| Film | Weekend | Per Screen | Total | |
| 1 | Pacific Rim Uprising | $28,003,000 | $7,552 | $28,003,000 |
| 2 | Black Panther | $16,658,000 (-37%) | $4,943 | $630,916,236 |
| 3 | I Can Only Imagine | $13,837,495 (-19%) | $6,142 | $38,316,986 |
| 4 | Sherlock Gnomes | $10,600,000 | $2,895 | $10,600,000 |
| 5 | Tomb Raider | $10,430,000 (-55%) | $2,706 | $41,748,108 |
| 6 | A Wrinkle in Time | $8,044,000 (-50%) | $2,350 | $73,886,607 |
| 7 | Love, Simon | $7,800,000 (-33%) | $3,205 | $23,695,601 |
| 8 | Paul, Apostle of Christ | $5,000,000 | $3,394 | $5,000,000 |
| 9 | Game Night | $4,160,000 (-25%) | $2,229 | $60,813,535 |
| 10 | Midnight Sun | $4,119,000 | $1,896 | $4,119,000 |
Although it was somewhat overshadowed by Black Panther’s incredible accomplishment, the top movie of the weekend was Pacific Rim Uprising, the sequel to Guillermo del Toro’s monsters versus robots sci-fi film. The sequel opened with about $28 million, down a fair amount from Pacific Rim’s $37.2 million debut in July of 2013, but it also grossed a whopping $122 million overseas, bringing its one-weekend total to $150 million. The first movie supposedly got a sequel because the film performed so well in China. If these numbers hold, we could get a third Pacific Rim for exactly the same reason.
Back to Black Panther. It is now the biggest comic-book movie ever in the United States; ahead of The Avengers, The Dark Knight, and Avengers: Age of Ultron. On a worldwide basis its $1.2 billion puts it in third among the Marvel Cinematic Universe, behind only the two Avengers movies. (Yes, Black Panther is the biggest solo movie in the entire MCU.) All-time it is now the fifth biggest domestic hit in history, behind just Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Avatar, Titanic, and Jurassic World. Wow.
Third place for the weekend went to I Can Only Imagine, which dropped just 19 percent, the lowest drop of the weekend, to gross $13.8 million. Fourth place for the weekend was the new animated film Sherlock Gnomes, very faithfully based on the works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It grossed $10.6 million, less than half the previous film in the series, Gnomeo & Juliet made in its opening weekend. But that film was very faithfully based on the works of William Shakespeare, who is statistically a much bigger box office draw than Doyle. Fifth place on the chart was the reboot of Tomb Raider, which dropped almost 56 percent from last weekend and grossed just $10.4 million. After 10 days in theaters, it’s made $41 million against a reported budget of over $90 million.
There was a very clear winner on a per-screen basis last weekend as well: Wes Anderson, whose Isle of Dogs grossed over $1.5 million on just 27 screens around the country. That checks out to a per-screen average of more than $58,000. No other movie this weekend had a PSA of more than $10,000. People love dogs almost as much as they love black panthers.
Gallery - The Biggest Worldwide Box Office Hits Ever:
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