Black Panther is not only King of Wakanda, but of the box office too, it seems. The Ryan Coogler-directed film, which is set to surpass Marvel's The Avengers as the highest grossing MCU film ever stateside, has single-handedly kept the movie industry on par with last year's earnings.
According to Variety, "the domestic box office through the first quarter is running flat with revenues from 2017." Much of that has to do with the success of Black Panther. Its Stateside gross, which will hit $630 million this weekend, is responsible for roughly a quarter of the domestic box office's $2.6 billion in revenue this year.
Comparatively, last year's first quarter revenues were more evenly distributed. Beauty and the Beast was the pillar with $504 million, but seven other films each earned more than $100 million, including Get Out and Logan. This year, it seems to be all Black Panther, which Variety points out is "yet another illustration of the new commercial dynamics in Hollywood — the business has increasingly been propped up by a handful of record-shattering hits, while other studio releases struggle, and largely fail to secure a foothold."
Exhibitor Relations box office analyst Jeff Bock called the revelation "unsettling," claiming, "Hollywood doesn’t seem to know what audiences want outside of Marvel, Pixar, and Blumhouse movies."
But while 2018 has started off rather slow, there's plenty of blockbusters to look forward to which could result in this year being one of the highest-grossing in history. Looking ahead, we have Avengers: Infinity War coming in April, which will likely shatter box office records, followed by Solo: A Star Wars Story in May. Though there's some skepticism surrounding the upcoming Star Wars film, which centers on a younger Han Solo, it's still bound to perform well at the box office off of brand name alone. Then we have Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom in June. So while 2018 has struggled out of the gate, there's clearly plenty of reason to be optimistic.