Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther is still making history nearly two months after it first opened in theaters.
The latest accomplishment: The Disney and Marvel superhero tentpole on Saturday passed 1997’s Titanic to rank as the third top-grossing title of all time at the North American box office behind 2015’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens ($936.7 million) and 2009’s Avatar ($760.5 million), not adjusted for inflation.
Black Panther finished Friday with a domestic total of $659.3 million, just shy of the $659.5 million grossed by Titanic.
Globally, Black Panther has grossed $1.29 billion to date and currently ranks as the No. 10 top-grossing title of all time.
The film — unprecedented in being a big-budget studio tentpole featuring a virtually all-black cast — stars Chadwick Boseman as T’Challa/Black Panther alongside Lupita Nyong’o, Michael B. Jordan, Danai Gurira, Daniel Kaluuya, Letitia Wright, Winston Duke, Angela Bassett, Forest Whitaker and Andy Serkis.
The story, described as a tale of black power and black pride in addition to its superhero themes, follows T’Challa as he is sworn in as king of Wakanda, a cloaked, technologically advanced nation in Africa that is home to the exotic metal vibranium, the source of Black Panther’s powers.
