This weekend, Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther reached the milestone we all saw coming when it became the top-grossing superhero of all time in the United States.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, the film accomplished the feat on Saturday after landing somewhere north of The Avengers previous record-holding figure of $624.3 million at the domestic box office. The film has since become only one of seven films to ever hit the $600 million benchmark in North America.
On the global scale, the film attracted $1.2 billion in ticket sales, becoming only 14th film to ever do so internationally. The film is expected to surpass Iron Man 3 by the end of the weekend to become the third highest-grossing superhero film of all time globally, to trail behind The Avengers ($1.5 billion) and Avengers: Age of Ultron ($1.4 billion).
The past few weeks since the box office debut of Black Panther have been nothing but the accomplished prelude to an impeccable peak. After spending five weeks at number on in the domestic box office—the first movie to claim the top spot title for so long since 2009’s Avatar—the film is set to fall in at second place with the debut of Pacific Rim this weekend. Estimates have Black Panther closing out with $16 million from 3,370 total sites after leaving 464 theaters since last week while Pacific Rim Uprising is slated to rake in $25 million from 3,708 locations in North America.
While Panther may be dethroned this week, moviegoers still have plenty of time to see T’Challa in action for weeks to come, including in the forthcoming Avengers: Infinity War alongside the likes of Iron Man and Thor when the film debuts on April 27th.