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*Disney/Marvel’s “Black Panther” is already the first movie since “Avatar” to top the weekend box office for five weeks in a row… and the 11th movie in 30 years to do so.
Forbes.com contributor Scott Mendelson noted that the MCU flick is “beating movies that presumed themselves to be tentpoles.”
“When Titanic did its thing 20 years ago, the “victims” were mostly smaller-scale studio programmers that weren’t necessarily do-or-die releases for their respective studios,” he writes.
Adding, “Yes, I too mourn the box office failures (never an absolution…) of Fallen, Dark City, Primary Colors, Deep Rising and Wild Things. But one of the reasons Titanic sailed away with the first one-third of 1998 was the relative lack of “big” movies in the opening months of the year. But what we’ve seen thus far with Black Panther… this is different. This is an entire pre-summer slate of would-be event movies getting steamrolled by one very big tentpole.”
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“A slate of event movies is facing an environment where they aren’t the event. Black Panther serves as a consensus pick for every demographic. “
“The Ryan Coogler-directed MCU action drama represents the worst nightmare of an entire industry now dedicated to a near-weekly stream of glorified event movies. Black Panther is so big and so “one size fits all” in its appeal that it has turned an entire slate of would-be blockbusters into counterprogramming.”
“We can’t know how well the last months worth of tentpoles would have performed if Black Panther had played like a “normal” ($95 million Fri-Sun/$235m total domestic) MCU flick. But it was so huge that it wounded a whole slate of studio-appointed biggies, all of which were important the respective studio’s bottom line.”
“When moviegoers only go to theaters for event movies, and one event movie rules them all, everything else is left fighting for scraps.“
“It’s bad enough when adult flicks like Annihilation or Gringo get ignored, thanks to folks flocking the tentpole event flick and consuming the rest of their entertainment at home. But if one tentpole can wipe out a bunch of other tentpoles, then year-round blockbuster scheduling may be doomed before it even begins.”
You can read Mendelson’s full write-up here.
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