Black Panther Has Now Passed The Dark Knight Rises At The Domestic Box Office

Black Panther is undoubtedly Wakanda’s greatest export – with Vibranium being a close second, of course.

Since its North American debut on February 16th, the standalone Marvel movie has carved out its own place in box office history – you can thank Black Panther‘s meteoric four-day weekend for that. To date, Ryan Coogler’s Afrocentric adventure has racked up an enormous $786 million worldwide, and we know North American ticket sales account for $451 million of that impressive total.

That means the spinoff is now ahead of The Dark Knight Rises at the domestic box office. Yup, after blowing right past Captain America: Civil War ($408M) and Iron Man 3 ($409M), Black Panther has become one of NA’s highest-grossing superhero movies ever, clawing its way ahead of Rises‘ $448M take and now within reaching distance of Age of Ultron ($458M). And after that? Well, there’s still The Dark Knight ($534M) and, of course, The Avengers at $623 million.

Whether T’Challa’s first standalone outing will be able to take down either – or both – of those pics remains to be seen, but at this point, we’d say that it’s not outside the realm of possibility. At the very least, if things keep up the way they’re going, it might just inch ahead of Christopher Nolan’s 2008 epic.

Even if it doesn’t, though, it’s almost a guarantee now that Ryan Coogler’s spinoff will break the $1 billion mark worldwide when all’s said and done, and that’s mighty impressive. At this point, no one can deny what a smashing success Black Panther has been and given how well crafted and executed it is, we’ve got nothing but a huge smile on our face as we watch it claw its way to box office glory.