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African American audiences are showing Black Panther maaad love demonstrating the impressive power of black dollars.   The first set of estimates are in, and they’re showing that Disney/Marvel’s Black Panther  is headed toward a historic weekend with $200M-$205M over four-days, $175M over three

 Black Panther‘s estimates are easily the pre-summer records beating Beauty and the Beast ($174.7M 3-day, $188.2M 4-day) and Warner Bros./DC’s Batman v. Superman ($166M 3-day, $181M 4-day). If these figures maintain, then Black Panther will own the 7th best opening of all-time at the domestic box office behind Captain America: Civil War ($179M). The pic is also on track to beat Marvel’s Iron Man 3 

Not only is the superhero action adventure empowering black folks on the big screen, but there are some major #BlackStarPower players working behind the scenes to help bring serve up the magic.

Director Ryan Coogler , a young brother too,  production director Hannah Beachler, costume designer Ruth E. Carter are a few of the talented African Americans who created the cinematic magic of Wakanda,

“Black Panther” director Ryan Coogler, 31,  says he used his own struggles with his cultural identity and desperate need for positive representation of Africa on screen as fuel for this project.

“You see media that can make you feel ashamed to be African. They can make it feel like it’s a shameful thing,” Coogler said. “I think it’s not. For me, the biggest thing on this was making this awesome, globe-trotting political thriller that just happens to be about Africans. It’s the best way to accomplish that goal and that’s what Marvel was interested in doing — that’s what I was interested in doing.”

Hannah Beachler, the film’s production director, built the nation of Wakanda. She says she was inspired by mixing traditional and modern architecture from the content of Africa. Beachler also rocked it out on Beyoncé’s visual album “Lemonade,”

“I drew from a lot of different places, I think, and keeping the tradition involved in the aesthetic and the design language was of the utmost importance, because it’s about black representation, the black future and agency using architecture and history and science and myth and biomimetics, and biomorphosis, and all of that went into the design,” she says. Ok this siSTAR is brilliant.  Real talk, I don’t even know what biomorphosis means.

Joe Robert Cole is the co-writer behind “Black Panther.” Along with Coogler, Cole drew inspiration and themes from the continent of Africa and infused them into the fictional nation of Wakanda.

“For so long there was a limited pool of people who had the opportunity to tell stories so that limited the perspective of the story being told. I think there is a fatigue with that perspective,”. “This is a movie that steps out of that in an amazing way. There’s a hunger for new lenses on the world, new ways of seeing stories. We spoke from our perspective,” Said Cole.

Ruth E. Carter, a legendary costume designer killed it designing the film’s amazing wardrobe.  No spoiler alert but that scene with the general in that red dress is unforgettable

“We wanted to honor [culture and tradition] in this futuristic way and a lot of the details of the indigenous African tribes easily translate into a futuristic model so that part of it was super fun to do and it was like no one had even really thought of it like that,” she told HuffPost.

Nate Moore broke barriers in bringing “Black Panther” to the big screen. The executive producer, has worked on several other Marvel films,

“There’s such an underserved population of people just aching for positive images of themselves on screen,” he said. “In this case, obviously the African-American and African communities seeing representations like T’Challa and Nakia and Okoye and all these great characters in the context of doing good and being heroic is valuable because those images don’t exist that much. And so, I think and I hope this movie can be a watershed to see other films like this.”

Black anther is a powerful example of black creativity, black economic power and black pride.  Don’t mis it.

How do you think the success of Black Panther will affect the film industry?  Hit me @jaztalk1 on Instagram, twitter and Facebook.

https://www.eurweb.com/2018/02/meet-the-blackstarpower-behind-the-scenes-of-marvels-black-panther/

 

Ryan Coogler For THR

Source: Brooke Nipar / Brooke Nipar for THR