UPDATE: Box Office numbers for the film have ended up at $201.7M for its three-day opening, and its four-day forecast has been raised to $235M.

ORIGINAL STORY:

Damn.

I think many of us expected Black Panther to have a pretty solid opening, but there’s no way anyone could have expected how things ended up. Leading up to the weekend, predictions shot up from the early-$100M range to around $120M — which was about on par with the already-surprising Thor: Ragnarok.

As the weekend got closer, projections slowly rose, and eventually were as high as $180M-$190M. Somehow, Black Panther managed to beat even that for its three-day weekend, coming in at a stunning $192M domestically. For reference, that’s the second-highest opening in the Marvel Cinematic Universe to date, beating even Avengers: Age of Ultron from 2015 (though, just barely).

RELATED – Kevin Feige’s Ranking Of Black Panther Among Other MCU Films

Plus, considering this is a standalone film (and not a film that has 11 other Avengers in it), it’s all the more exciting. This really goes to show just how much pent-up enthusiasm there is for diverse heroes. Marvel, as well as other studios, should take note (without forgetting the fact that the movies need to be good!

Black Panther is on course to hit a $218M four-day-weekend, which is crazy. So far, it’s hit $361M worldwide, far surpassing its budget. It likely hasn’t broken even just yet (when taking into account the marking, which could very well have exceeded $100M), though it’s likely at least incredibly close. You can go ahead and mark this off as another success for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and it puts them in prime position for Avengers: Infinity War, which will likely also break all sorts of records for the studio.

Are you excited to see Black Panther succeed? Did it do even better than you anticipated? Let us know your thoughts down below!

Don’t forget to share this post on your Facebook wall and with your Twitter followers! Just hit the buttons on the top of this page.

SOURCE: Box Office Mojo