Back in late September, projections were that “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” would turn in a $424 million domestic haul, well below what its 2018 predecessor pulled in.
2018’s “Black Panther” made around $700 million at the domestic box-office. A lot has changed since then. A 40% drop is still surprising though. Regardless, those projections seem to have been fairly accurate.
‘Wakanda Forever’ grossed an estimated $17.59M over the weekend (from 3,855 locations), around a 60% drop from last weekend. Its estimated total domestic gross currently stands at around $393M.
The sequel, ‘Wakanda Forecer,’ for obvious reasons, did not have Michael B. Jordan and the late Chadwick Boseman. In fact, the creators decided to just kill off Boseman’s T’Challah AkA Black Panther.
These numbers are rather unusual given that Marvel sequels tend to gross more if not around the same amount as their predecessors, but the cards were indeed stacked against the sequel with no Boseman and Jordan.
It’s still very surprising that this sequel will not be getting into the all-time Top 20 as it now seems out of its reach. We might not have expected it to top the original's $700 million, but $500 million should have easily happened — look at what Spider-Man was able to do with the third film in that trilogy last year.
It’s quite possible that not many people just didn’t have any interest in seeing ’Wakanda Forever’ multiple times.