It was a very good weekend at the box office for Disney. They have the top two films of the weekend and their first billion dollar film of the year. Those films, of course, are “Black Panther” and “A Wrinkle in Time.” As a Disney fan, I’m really proud to note that both films were directed by black filmmakers and are being singled out for their diverse casts and crews. Even if they weren’t doing fantastic at the box office, they’d be remarkable just for that.
But they are doing well at the box office. Black Panther is an unstoppable army from Wakanda and it landed at number one for the weekend again with $41.1 million and a domestic total of $562M. Thanks to a very strong debut in China with $65.5M, part of a $100M global weekend total, it was able to cross the magical $500 million market at the international box office making for Disney’s first film to cross $1 billion world wide. By the end of Sunday the film had scored $1.08B. Not too bad for its fourth weekend.
Black Panther is $60M away from becoming the top grossing domestic Marvel Cinematic Universe movie passing “Avengers: Age of Ultron.” It has a much further distance to take the worldwide title however.
Coming in at a strong second this weekend is Disney’s “A Wrinkle in Time” with $33.3M. This was a slightly stronger performance than early estimates. Wrinkle opened in just six international markets earning an estimated $6.3M.
Although the production cost of A Wrinkle in Time was somewhere north of $100M, Disney has to be pretty happy to have two films a top the box office. Wrinkle will need good worth of mouth to have a decent week. While its Rotten Tomatoes score is low, it has been getting good reviews from the perspective of a film created specifically for young children. With Spring Breaks across the country just getting underway, it’s not over for this wonderful heartfelt movie by any stretch.