Saturday AM: It’s the best of times and the worst of times at the box office.

On the bright side we have Black Panther which is performing like a summer tent pole during the first quarter of the year, set to hit$607.4M this Sunday, and what many ultimately believe will be an end game of $650M stateside, $1.25 billion worldwide and now per our film finance sources will churn a total estimated profit of $461M after all ancillaries (ironically, a total that’s close to what some analysts believe Disney CEO Bob Iger could earn over four years if he hits all his performance goals in his compensation package).

That’s a sizeable chunk of change, one that’s higher than the profits of Avengers: Age of Ultron $382.3Mand Captain America: Civil War‘s $193.4M, and we’re informed a lot of that has to do with the fresh face cast of Black Panther. There’s not a lot of heavy participations impacting Black Panther‘s bottom line in the Robert Downey Jr. or Joss Whedon Avengers sense, nor is it at the level of a fast & Furious cast where its top players reportedly earn $0.40 of every $1 of profit after break even. Note Disney did not generate these Black Panther profit estimates for us.

For better or for worse, studios are taking advantage of the summer off-season which has proven to be lucrative, however, they’re flooding the marketplace with male-orientedaction pictures in the market (eitheropening or on their way), i.e. MGM/Warner Bros.’ Tomb Raider this weekend (est.$23.1Mopening in 2nd place drawing 37% Men over 25, men overall at 56%), Universal/Legendary’s Pacific Rim Rising next weekend, and Warner Bros./Village Roadshow’s Ready Player One over Easter. In sum, it’s a challenge for any of these titles topop on tracking past $35M. Some distribution executives fear that thisfierce competition is a blur. Ready Player Onegenerated some great heat out of SXSW and Warner Bros. has some great stunts planned, so we could see that one rise in its projections, but for now Black Panther sits on everything with a fifth No. 1 weekend of$29M.The lesson learned here for rival studios is: You’ve got to be better than Marvel. What does Marvel dothat your studio does not in regardsto making movies, and marketing them? For one, the creatives there don’t just rest on their laurels and believe that brand alone will open their movie as an event. Marvel movies defy genre, raise stakes, create experiences we haven’t seen before with an auteur’s touch: James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy, Taika Waititi’s Thor: Ragnarokand Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther all stand apart from each other, and audiences can point to and savor each pic’s unique qualities.



Our finance sources continue to be gobsmacked by the results of BlackPanther‘s over-performance, especially overseas, but still emphasize that the film is largely driven by its domestic results of which African American audiences have turned out greatly (close to 40% per Screen Engine/ComScore’s PostTrak). This makes the pic an anomaly, and hard to comp in the ancillary market. Given how Black Panther was soft in certain westernEuro markets like Italy, Spain, Germany, and Japan, the thinking isthat the home entertainment cascade in those markets will be smaller as well. That’s why our estimates for the movie’s net global home entertainment monies of $125M are smaller than say Civil War’s $132M global home entertainment revenues or Ultron‘s $161.7M. Disney has some of the bestforeign TV deals, and terms for suchoutput deals remain fixed whether a studio has a $1 billion-grossing film or a $700M-grossing title.