Beauty and the Beast is a family film, so it probably had proportionally less presales than you'd expect of Black Panther, so it's not necessarily doing 175m+, but I think it does 160m.

What do we think the opening weekend theater count will be? Over 4,000?

Yeah, this is topping $170 million in its opening and it slegs are going to be terrific (for this kind of film/opening). $450+ million looking more and more likely.

I'm still not sure topping presales to BatB translates to $170m+ OW but this could very well open bigger than BatB. Jumanji has been benefiting from a lacklustre market left by TLJ since December so this could easily breakout. It has that perfect storm of events helping it

It now has 99%.

Good old Ireland!

Irish Independent:

Quote:

Black Panther spirals into a stodgy tale of internecine feuding, in which T’Challa is required to come to terms with the sins of past generations. What he doesn’t get to do much of is jump around beating-up bad guys. That’s a shame.

I totally thought it was going to hold 100 reviews for longer. So Paddington 2 is still the freshest movie.

Fucked up part is that Irish Independent reviewer scored it a 3.5 out of 5 and he STILL chose to give it rotten.
Makes no sense. RT should fix it or that asshole should update his score.

Safe to say "fresh" comic book characters are clearly IN after Deadpool, Wonder Woman, Thor, and now Black panther are crushing the Batman/Superman/Iron Man/Spider-man movies.

It's a good point. There will not be superhero fatigue, just Batman/Superman/Spider-Man fatigue. They have been done to death, so shouldn't be a surprise. Though they can still make big money. It's like eating. You eat toast every day. Sometimes you want cereal to mix it up. And then you're on the cereal for a few weeks. Then back to good old Batman again.

This is looking really good for a $150M+ OW and I'm talking about for the 3-Day. It literally has everything going for it, but I'm not ready to say its a lock to beat BATB OW, because I'm sure with this being Marvel and all the hype around it being a cultural event that their is definitely going to be somewhat of a rush factor.

going to the Houston Alamo Drafthouse location & definitely going to try out as much of the African inspired menu as my stomach will allow.

Soundtrack was released today and already number 1 on the sales charts

Boom!!! #WakandaForever

The soundtrack has a lot of really good songs on it. I can’t think of a better last minute advertising blitz and am now a believer in $150m+ opening even with NBA competition.

I like Pray for Me because The Weeknd is awesome.

NBA all-star weekend won’t be much of a competition

What do you guys think it'll do for Thursday night?

I'm thinking it'll do similar to Suicide Squad, $20-21m.

Nah, it will be more front loaded than that. 25m+ previews incoming.

Yeah I think given the hype and presales $25m+. I'm going with $27m

So I guess a (now former) insider shared Black Panther's presales and uh, hoo boy - Black Panther numbers comapred to other Marvel movies at the same point:

$6.941m - Black Panther
$3.394m - Age of Ultron
$3.208m - Civil War
$2.345m - GotG2
$2.106m - Ragnarok

It’s not opening to 300m.

Brilliant observation.

"Cool" factor is as big for this as it's been for any Marvel film. That said, I think it somewhat limits family appeal.

$165/425 huge

well its more than tripling Thor 3 presales.