King T’Challa continues to reign at the box office as Marvel Studios’ Black Panther handily beat out newcomer Tomb Raider at the domestic box office this weekend. The superhero film took in another $27 million in ticket sales, bringing its total US haul to just over $600 million. Add in its international receipts to date, which includes the $30 million it has done over the weekend, and Black Panther has a total take of nearly $1.2 billion.
This marks the fifth week in a row that Black Panther has taken the number one spot for ticket sales. The only other film to have reached this achievement was James Cameron’s Avatar, which held onto the top spot for an unprecedented eight weeks over 2009 to 2010.
With $605 million earned domestically, Black Panther is now the second highest grossing Marvel Studios film, trailing 2012’s The Avengers and its $623 million domestic total. It is also only the seventh film to ever cross the $600 million domestic box office mark. It is also the second fastest to have hit that milestone, achieving it in just 31 days of release. Star Wars: The Force Awakens is the fastest to have hit that point, having done so in just 12 days.
But it wasn’t all bad news for Tomb Raider. The film opened in seven Asian Pacific territories last weekend, and has been doing brisk business there. This weekend, the film upped its total to 65 countries and has taken in $102.5 million, $41.1 million of which came from just China alone. Combined with Tomb Raider‘s estimated domestic take of $23.5 million from this weekend gives the $90 million budgeted film an international box office take of $126 million. It is being reported that with factoring in distribution fees and marketing, Tomb Raider will need to ultimately make somewhere in the vicinity of $275 million to turn a profit for Warner Brothers, but it seems well on its way to hitting that goal.
