World’s top theatre chain soars on ‘Wakanda Forever’ debut
• AMC Entertainment leaps 61% in three days’ trade, thanks to box office blockbuster from Walt Disney’s Marvel unit
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, the latest superhero picture from Walt Disney’s Marvel unit, topped the weekend box office in the US and Canada with $180m in ticket sales.
The studio expected the film to generate $175m domestically on debut. Boxoffice Pro estimated it would take in anywhere from $170m to $205m. Globally, the film took in $330m, Disney said in a statement on Sunday.
AMC Entertainment Holdings, the world’s largest theatre chain, climbed as much as 16% in trading on Monday, bringing its rally over the past three trading days to 61%. The group said turnout for Wakanda Forever led to its fourth-busiest weekend of the year. Rival exhibitor Cinemark Holdings climbed 1.8%. Disney was little changed.
The first Black Panther film in 2018 was a watershed moment for Disney and the industry as the first big-budget superhero movie to feature a largely black cast. The picture went on to gross almost $1.4bn worldwide, dispelling myths that action movies starring people of colour would not perform well abroad.
Tragedy struck with the 2020 death of the first film’s star, Chadwick Boseman, however. The creative team behind the sequel had to pivot. Co-writer and director Ryan Coogler recast the story as one that incorporates the hero’s death and sets up a new team of black female stars to fight the bad guys and presumably produce more sequels and spin-offs.
Women over the age of 25 accounted for about a third of the audience for the new film, according to people in the know about the debut. It is likely that some of the older viewers may not have seen the original but were drawn to the sequel as the first movie was such a sensation, said a source who asked not to be identified, revealing an analysis of the results.
The new film had a strong 85% approval rating from critics going into the weekend, according to review aggregator RottenTomatoes.com.
The film is likely to have benefited from opening over the Veterans Day holiday weekend, and from little competition from other new releases.
It was the second-highest grossing film opening this year, after Disney’s Doctor Strange, which took in $187.4m in May.
The original Black Panther also debuted on a three-day holiday weekend. Disney and its distributors view the opening weekend performance of the sequel as a success, according to the people.
The release of Wakanda Forever comes at a tumultuous time for media stocks. Disney suffered its worst one-day rout in 21 years on November 9 after it said losses in its direct-to-consumer arm, driven by the Disney+
streaming service, more than doubled to $1.47bn in the company’s fourth quarter.
The picture’s solid performance is also a much-needed tailwind for theatre chains, some of which have entered or are nearing bankruptcy amid competition from streaming insurgents and a dearth of blockbuster releases this year. /Bloomberg