Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther has become the top-grossing superhero film of all time in North America, not accounting for inflation.
The Disney and Marvel release achieved the milestone on Saturday after passing up fellow Marvel title The Avengers, which grossed $623.4 million in 2012. To boot, Black Panther is only one of seven films to ever earn $600 million or more domestically (it currently ranks No. 6 on the list).
Black Panther has shattered numerous milestones since opening in theaters on Feb. 16.
Globally, the film has earned north of $1.2 billion to date. By the end of Sunday, it will leap past Iron Man 3 ($1.214 billion) to become the third-biggest comic book adaptation behind The Avengers ($1.5 billion) and Avengers: Age of Ultron ($1.4 billion).
The movie, which cost $200 million to make before marketing, was a bold move on the part of Disney and Marvel Studios’ Kevin Feige.
Black Panther is unprecedented in being a big-budget studio tentpole featuring a virtually all-black cast. Chadwick Boseman stars as T’Challa/Black Panther alongside Lupita Nyong’o, Michael B. Jordan, Danai Gurira, Daniel Kaluuya, Letitia Wright, Winston Duke, Angela Bassett, Forest Whitaker and Andy Serkis.
(Excerpt) Read More in: The Hollywood Reporter