13 Huge Movies That Black Panther Destroyed At The Box Office

7. The Lord Of The Rings: Return Of The King

Box Office: $1.119 billion.

Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings movies were all stonking box office hits, none more than 2003's climactic Return of the King, which effortlessly sailed past the billion-dollar mark - all the more impressive considering its 18-hour runtime.

ROTK is also only the second billion-dollar movie to win the Best Picture Oscar (after Titanic), but even with an insane 11 Academy Awards under its belt, it still wasn't able to hold Wakanda at bay.

Granted, there's a 15-year gap between the release of these two movies, but while it's not terribly surprising that an MCU movie outgrosses a fantasy film based on a book written many decades ago, it's important to remember just how popular Lord of the Rings was in the early 2000s.

Following the release of The Two Towers, audiences were chomping at the bit for that finale, and the hype certainly seemed more palpable than that for Black Panther

Sure, if you adjusted ROTK's take for inflation it would still come out on top with roughly $1.517 billion, but that Black Panther has stood tall with one of the most acclaimed literary adaptations of all time is nothing short of stunning.