Dear Gossips,
I was obsessed all weekend with checking the box office for Black Panther. As noted last week, the projections kept going up every day. And the numbers kept climbing every few hours this weekend and breaking all kinds of records. By Saturday morning they seemed certain the movie would get to $200 million. Yesterday Disney was saying $218 million (4 day) and this morning, I just checked, Black Panther’s Sunday box office is now the second highest Sunday box office of all time, behind only Star Wars: The Force Awakens by only a million dollars, and some think that the 4 day total, given that it’s a long weekend in the US, will also come in as the second highest of all time. Right now they’re still calling it the fifth of all time but, again, as I said, these figures keep rising.
It’s an extraordinary achievement… and Ryan Coogler is only 31 years old!
Given those (still-changing) totals, I’m assuming many of you saw Black Panther this weekend? And maybe more than once? What were your favourite parts? I’m still daydreaming about when Okoye (Danai Gurira) speared that car and stomped up on the hood, her red dress billowing around her. When that happened, I felt like my soul left my body and floated up to heaven. And then, of course, there’s Shuri, played by Letitia Wright, the breakout star of a movie that’s already stacked with stars (and an Oscar nominee). Shuri, as Sarah wrote in her review of Black Panther last week, may very well be the one person in the MCU Tony Stark can’t (Iron)mansplain to without getting his ass handed back to him.
So…which Black Panther character are you? Please. You know I love a quiz, but I especially love a character quiz. And I’ve done two so far. The BBC has one and of course Buzzfeed has already put out theirs. I got Nakia (Lupita Nyong’o) both times. Nakia is a spy. She knows her gossip.
Here are Lupita and Letitia at the BAFTAs last night. To learn more about Letitia and Princess Shuri, check out Vanity Fair’s new profile. Ryan Coogler called Shuri the “love and the light” of the film. She really, really is. Because she is the possibility, the future. She also had most of the funniest lines in the movie.
“Don’t scare me like that, coloniser.”
!!!!!!!!!
Yours in gossip,
Lainey
