Over its first ten years, Marvel Studios has firmly established its Marvel Cinematic Universe as the biggest movie franchise in history with a combined box office gross of almost $17 billion across 19 releases.
In addition to enormous financial success, Marvel has also carved out a reputation for delivering solid, crowd (and critic) pleasing blockbusters, as well as a number of highly-acclaimed offerings such as Iron Man, Guardians of the Galaxy, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Captain America: Civil War and Avengers: Infinity War.
However, asked for his thoughts on the best movie that Marvel has made, studio chief Kevin Feige points to this year’s Black Panther, which he credits with making Marvel “a better studio.”
“The experience of making Black Panther, even before it came out, was a transformative one,” said Feige at the 10th annual Produced By conference this past Saturday. “We’re watching the final playback, where you see the final film and check for any last-minute changes, and when it ended I just instinctually leaned over to [director Ryan Coogler] and said, ‘I think this is the best movie we’ve ever made.’ We had to make that movie to destroy a myth that Black movies don’t succeed around the world.”
Marvel certainly achieved that goal, with Black Panther becoming the ninth highest-grossing movies of all time with $1.346 billion in the bank.
SEE ALSO: Ryan Coogler was reluctant to kill of a certain Black Panther character
SEE ALSO: Ryan Coogler would like to direct a female-led Black Panther spinoff
After the events of Captain America: Civil War, King T’Challa returns home to the reclusive, technologically advanced African nation of Wakanda to serve as his country’s new leader. However, T’Challa soon finds that he is challenged for the throne from factions within his own country. When two foes conspire to destroy Wakanda, the hero known as Black Panther must team up with C.I.A. agent Everett K. Ross and members of the Dora Milaje, Wakandan special forces, to prevent Wakanda from being dragged into a world war.
Black Panther sees Ryan Coogler (Creed) directing Chadwick Boseman as T’Challa alongside Lupita Nyong’o as Nakia, Michael B. Jordan as Erik Killmonger, Danai Gurira as Okoye, Winston Duke as M’Baku, Forest Whitaker as Zuri, Daniel Kaluuya as W’Kabi, Angela Bassett as Ramonda, Florence Kasumba as Ayo, Martin Freeman as Everett Ross, Andy Serkis as Ulysses Klaue, Letitia Wright as Shuri, Sterling K. Brown as N’Jobu, John Kani as King T’Chaka and Nabiyah Be as Linda.
