15 Most Highly-Anticipated Blockbuster Movies In History

Somewhere along the line, Marvel Studios' and Ryan Coogler's Black Panther went from being just another entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe to one of the most significant movies in recent memory. The groundswell of hype and support built up so ferociously during the marketing campaign that the movie smashed records around the globe, establishing T'Challa as king of the box office as well as Wakanda.

People began to sense that this wasn't just a popcorn flick, but a project that captured the entire zeitgeist and appealed to virtually everyone. Annihilating pre-sale ticket records, Black Panther exploded into theaters with a domestic opening weekend of $202m and stayed in the top ten for an incredible thirteen weeks, becoming the third highest-grossing movie the United States had ever seen.

By no means a perfect movie but still a damn good one, Black Panther captured the public's imagination and generated such excitement because it felt much less like a run-of-the-mill Hollywood blockbuster and more like a genuine cultural phenomenon, which propelled it to a current position as the ninth biggest movie of all time with well over $1.3bn in the bank.