For the record the AVENGERS movie only lasted at the box office for 20 weeks. BLACK PANTHERS's staying power was 25 weeks (based on theater's continued ability to sell tickets) shocking most every Hollywood white gatekeeper there is.
In all fairness though, the AVENGERS flick was half a movie and ended on a down note.
And while the AVENGERS more money altogether, making nearly 2/3rds of it's box office overseas, I have to wonder about how much of BLACK PANTHER'S limitations were due to white Hollywood assuming that black movies won't be watched in foreign markets.
I mean, even domestically, the AVENGERS was released in more theaters despite BLACK PANTHER (in hindsight) being the more successful movie.
Assumptions going out of the gate determine where something is released and how many theaters it is released in, which in turn bolsters or limits the success of a movie. The mostly white Avengers -- all the core white characters still alive at the end of the first half of the Thanos episode-- opened in more theaters with way more hype, frankly. And it still didn't beat BLACK PANTHER domestically.
While there may be racist resistance to seeing black movies in some countries, based on home grown othering (racism) and white supremacy imported from the U.S. (people come to the U.S expecting all black people to be thugs based on exported white TV) black movies deserve more space, advertising and full court press overseas too.
BLACK PANTHER,
a billion dollar block buster,
has proven black movies
with hella black female stars
who are immediately identifiable as black-sans-question-marks
can go the distance.
And I'm hoping Jordan Peele's US is going to prove the same thing in Spring of 2019
Peele's GET OUT made 176 million dollars domestically, with only one black woman on the screen for a few minutes at a police station. With Lupita N'yongo and Anna Diop starring in US -- the black women cast as chocolate-y dark as the black men, same as BLACK PANTHER, I think black women movie goers might double this 176 mil. figure and maybe help the movie earn even more in foreign markets as well.
Black women support those who support us...in spades. So, I hope the black male gatekeepers of black film are paying attention too.
And wouldn't it be interesting to see if Peele,
another black male Hollywood elite
married to a white or light woman,
can pull other black male directors
who also date/pair-up/marry nearly all light and white women
into being just as pro-black for black women
as they are for black men
which might stop the black male Hollywood elite
from pouring colorism-based images over the black community
"without noticing" that they are doing so.
A movie buff, I can't wait to see what happens next for black film. Can you?
I'm becoming more and more spoiled. After Shonda Rhimes created television shows with black female leads that didn't look bi-racial and/or some other race altogether, I started having a really hard time watching all white shows unless they were family dramas.
And now that I've had BLACK PANTHER, the bi-racial black chicks aren't enough for me -- not all by their lonesome. I love Tessa Thompson for example. But I'm only going to support her in a movie -- that I'm not particularly interested in seeing based on the storyline-- if I see another black woman sans white features in the film too.
Again, I supported damn near every single one of Halle Berry and Vanessa William's movies back in the day. Their white-featured version of good looks got them cast over and over again and they broke glass ceilings for black women in Hollywood. No doubt. But they mostly broke ceilings for other pale black women.
BLACK PANTHER, HIDDEN FIGURES, US, and VIOLA DAVIS movies are breaking adjacent glass ceilings for darker-skinned black women with black facial features.
And I'm here for all of it.
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