Six months after its theatrical release and three months after it was released on Blu-Ray, Marvel’s “Black Panther” has hit one final milestone at the box office, becoming only the third film ever to gross over $700 million at the domestic box office.
Ryan Coogler’s Wakandan odyssey joins “Avatar” ($760.5 million) and “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” ($936.6 million) in this elite club.
Amazingly, while Marvel’s more recent hit “Avengers: Infinity War” has smashed nearly every other box office record in the books, it looks unlikely to hit $700 million — with a $678 million gross in North America after 15 weekends.
By comparison, “Black Panther,” with its status as an American cultural phenomenon, was able to take advantage of a less competitive pre-summer slate to take the No. 1 spot at the box office for five straight weekends.
While “Infinity War” has earned the biggest opening weekend of all-time and become the first summer film to earn over $2 billion worldwide, the slew of blockbusters that came after it like “Incredibles 2” meant that it couldn’t keep up the domestic pace that “Black Panther” set.
After 15 weekends, “Black Panther” had $698 million, putting it in position to break the $700 million mark from grosses in discount theaters. With just 25 theaters still holding the film this weekend, “Black Panther” made $35,000 to hit the mark.
With $1.34 billion grossed worldwide, “Black Panther” sits at No. 9 on the all-time box office charts, joining the three “Avengers” films in the top 10. It is also the only film in the top 10 to have made the majority of its grosses from domestic receipts, and only one of four films to do so while grossing over $1 billion worldwide.
The other films are “The Dark Knight,” “Rogue One” and “Incredibles 2.”