Theater counts: Wakanda Forever debuts in mighty 4,396 theaters

November 10, 2022

The big question going into this weekend is not whether Black Panther: Wakanda Forever will top the chart (it will), but whether it can beat the $187.4 million earned by Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness on its opening weekend, and thereby record the biggest weekend of 2022 (so far). What we do know right now is that it’ll have to beat that record while playing in 138 fewer theaters.

Disney reported a theater count of 4,396 for Black Panther this afternoon. That’s a slightly surprising number: six fewer than Black Adam, and only the sixth-widest release of the year. As a point of comparison, this year’s widest release was Top Gun: Maverick, which opened in a record-setting 4,751 locations.

There are three possible explanations for this. One is lack of interest from the theaters (which seems unlikely). The second is that Disney is being slightly more selective in the theaters it’s allowing to play the movie. Finally, some theaters have closed since the Summer, reducing the available footprint for big films. Whatever the reason, it doesn’t mean Wakanda Forever can’t post a huge opening. Black Panther topped $200 million from 4,020 theaters in 2018. I’ll have our official prediction tomorrow morning.

Nothing is really daring to go head-to-head with Black Panther this weekend, but The Fabelmans, Steven Spielberg’s coming-of-age movie, will open in four theaters. It might pull off the highest theater average of the weekend, and will expand wide over Thanksgiving.

Theater Counts for November 11

Estimates for November 18

Bruce Nash

Filed under: Theater Counts, Steven Spielberg