It comes as no surprise that Black Panther has absolutely dominated the box office overseas, since those outside of North America were lucky enough to see the film a few days earlier. Variety reports that the Marvel film raked in $23.2 million after screening in 17 locations including cities such as United Kingdom, South Korea, and France.
Specifically, the Ryan Coogler directed film with Marvel's first black protagonist, pulled in $7.2 million in the U.K., $4.7 million in South Korea, $2 million in Taiwan, $1.6 million in France, and $1.1 million in Hong Kong.
Lupita Nyong'o, who stars in the movie as Nakia, recently spoke with Allure magazine about working on set. "It was just such an inspirational experience because so much thought was put into this film," she said. "And every single aspect of it was rich and beautiful and just arresting, actually. To see this aspirational African world that actually becomes an example for the whole wide world was spellbinding. We were all very much aware that we were in something extremely special."
Ryan also chatted on his major film telling Essence magazine that he had been "studying the effects of colonization and the African Diaspora."
"Specifically as it relates to African-Americans and Africans, and what I hit on was this concept of what it means to be African," he added. "I pitched that to the studio as a main theme of exploration, and they were totally interested, which is, to their credit, really cool."
Black Panther hits North American theatres on Friday, February 16th.