The weekend will come when Black Panther isn't the king of the box office, but this is not that weekend. In its fifth week of release, there was a possibility, however slight, that Disney's Black Panther might finally lose its box office crown to the premiering Tomb Raider starring Alicia Vikander, if only because Black Panther 's weekend totals had dropped enough over the last month. While Lara Croft gave it her best effort, it just wasn't quite enough, and Black Panther remained on top. Check out the complete top 10 below, then we'll break down the numbers.
For the second straight weekend, Black Panther sneaks out another box office win over a challenger that put up a significant, but not sufficient, box office total. Last weekend A Wrinkle in TIme put up a box office number that would have been enough to win this weekend, but still fell short to Black Panther. Panther's box office fell by a third compared to last weekend, but it still ended up with enough win for the fifth straight weekend by adding another $27 million to its total, bringing its domestic total in five weeks to over $600 million.
Black Panther now sits in striking distance of becoming the biggest comic book movie ever. Marvel's The Avengers is currently the domestic box office champ with $623 million, but will less than $20 million now separating it and Panther one has to wonder if next weekend will represent a huge moment for Marvel's newest hero. Everybody was expecting Marvel's big team-up event Avengers: Infinity War to be the one that would set all the box office records, but now it seems that to do that, it's going to have to beat Black Panther less than three months after it set all the records.
Tomb Raider was the major tentpole release this weekend with a big movie based on a popular video game franchise opening in nearly 4,000 theaters. If anybody was going to dethrone Black Panther this weekend it was going to be Tomb Raider, unfortunately, the new film was only able to muster $23 million at the domestic box office. For a movie with a budget in the neighborhood of $100 million, that total is dangerously low, although the international box office did come to Tomb Raider's aid with an additional $102 million, which will likely help keep the movie above water.
A more surprising result was the third-place finish for I Can Only Imagine. The faith-based feature was only released in half as many theaters as most of the rest of the top 10, but it was still able to garner a strong $17 million, putting it ahead of both A Wrinkle in Time, which dropped 50% from its opening weekend to bring in an additional $16 million, and the opening of Love, Simon which did $11.5 million, a strong showing for a small movie. With Simon 's nearly non-existent budget, the romance is already a success.
The other release for the weekend, the hostage drama 7 Days in Entebbe, failed to break the top ten, bringing in only $1.6 million which was only good enough for 13th place. Although, the film opened in less than 1,000 theaters, which is certainly responsible for part of the showing.
Black Panther has another piece of blockbuster competition coming next weekend in the form of Pacific Rim: Uprising. The first film in the franchise brought in nearly $40 million during its opening weekend in 2013, so it's a strong contender to finally end Marvel's streak at the top. Other films set to release on Friday include the Gnomeo and Juliet sequel Sherlock Gnomes, romantic drama Midnight Sun, thriller Unsane, and another film looking to be popular with the faith-based audience Paul, Apostle of Christ. We'll find out next Sunday if Black Panther finally gives up the crown.
