Black Panther Tips The MCU Over The $14 Billion Mark Worldwide

The Marvel Cinematic Universe, already the most successful movie franchise of all time, has just busted past the $14 billion dollar mark. This latest triumph is well-deserved, too, coming as a result of the success of the excellent Black Panther. The film was greeted with universal critical and audience praise on its release last week and has proceeded to exceed even the most optimistic box office forecasts, having hauled in an astonishing $505 million already.

Though an MCU movie and therefore pretty much guaranteed to make money, nobody expected Black Panther to perform this well. After all, it’s being released way out of summer blockbuster season, it stars a relatively obscure C-list superhero and goes against the received wisdom that white audiences just won’t turn up to see a film starring a predominantly black cast.

Well, nuts to all the naysayers – it’s beginning to look like Ryan Coogler’s spinoff might break the $1 billion mark when all’s said and done. And that’s mighty impressive.

All this makes Disney’s $4 billion buyout of Marvel Studios in 2009 look like a great business decision. Back then, with just Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk in cinemas, people questioned whether shelling out $4 billion was a good idea, especially considering they weren’t getting access to big hitters like Spider-Man, X-Men and the Fantastic Four.

Now consider for a second that these movies have made $14 billion at the box office alone, and then Disney’s making merchandising money on top of that (and the TV shows) and you get an idea of just how good the superhero business has been for the studio.

For now, the future looks even rosier, too. Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers 4 (and Ant-Man and the Wasp) should nudge the franchise over the $16 billion mark and then there’s Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, Captain Marvel and whatever Disney decide they’re going to do with their purchase of the Fox IPs. Whatever happens, the future of cinema is still looking decidedly superhero-shaped, and we couldn’t be happier about it.