‘Black Panther’ Box Office Tracking Shows Opening Weekend of $180-$200 Million Possible

In just a few hours, Black Panther finally opens in North America and it's looking to be an even bigger smash than anyone could have predicted. The film set a single day advanced ticket sales record last month when tickets went on sale, and now it's shaping up to have the second biggest opening in Marvel Studios history. According to Deadline, tracking on the film now shows its opening weekend is on track to be between $180 and $200 million dollars.

The film's box office prospects have soared since tracking began. Initially it was thought that the film could open to $100 million, but that figure has steadily increased over the last few weeks...

(P)rojections for Black Panther continue to go crazy. At the start of the week, projections were between $155M-$170M over four-days. Now rivals are talking $180M, maybe even $200M for the Ryan Coogler feature which will be in play at 4,000 theaters (Lego Batman holds the record as the widest release for February with a star of 4,088 locations).Distributors tell Deadline that Black Panther is already poised to do unprecedented business in theaters in Atlanta, Baldwin Hills, and Harlem.

Couple that with the film's terrific reviews to date and it's looking to be Marvel's biggest superhero origin film to date, easily overtaking Iron Man's $98 million opening back in 2008. Should it top $191 million, it will supplant Avengers: Age of Ultron as the second biggest Marvel opening to date, and another $16 million on top of that helps it eclipse 2012's The Avengers. Those are both high mountains to climb, but don't doubt the power of this flick to do just that.