LOS ANGELES – Ticket buyers around the world are poised to smash another one of Hollywood’s most entrenched beliefs.
Movies rooted in black culture cannot become global blockbusters? Guess again. The euphorically reviewed Disney-Marvel superhero movie “Black Panther,” with an almost entirely black cast and a powerful Afrocentric story line, is expected to take in at least $250 million worldwide between Friday and Monday, according to analyst projections. Fandango, the online ticketing site, said on Thursday that “Black Panther” was its No. 4 pre-seller of all time, behind only the last three “Star Wars” movies.
An opening total in that range would put “Black Panther” on a course to become one of the year’s biggest hits — perhaps even approaching the blockbuster status attained last summer by another Hollywood myth-buster, “Wonder Woman.” That Warner Bros. film ultimately collected $821.8 million worldwide, ridding the movie business of the long-held notion that female superheroes don’t sell.
“One by one, these unwritten Hollywood rules about what audiences supposedly will and will not support are falling by the wayside,” said Jeff Bock, a senior analyst at Exhibitor Relations, an entertainment research firm. “I think about it like a wall crumbling. In terms of ‘Black Panther,’ no studio can say again, ‘Oh, black movies don’t travel, overseas interest will be minimal.'”
Disney, which has been on a box office tear, decided several years ago to make a concerted effort to promote diversity and equality on screen. But “Black Panther” also arrives at a time when studios have started to respond to growing pressure to make their big-budget movies more inclusive, driven in part by the recent #OscarsSoWhite movement. And with audiences increasingly inclined to stay home and watch Netflix, producing movies featuring lead characters with different skin colors, genders and sexualities is proving to be good business.