Disney’s Marvel has 10 billion-dollar films

Marvel Studios is hoping that “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” will become its 11th billion-dollar grossing film.

The sequel to 2018’s “Black Panther”, which earned $1.3 billion and is currently the No. 14 highest-grossing movie ever made, has had a strong performance at the box office since its Nov. 11 release.

“Wakanda Forever” is more than halfway to the billion-dollar mark, with a $552 million gross as of Nov. 23, according to Box Office Mojo data, including a $293 million domestic haul ahead of the lucrative Thanksgiving weekend.

The home of characters like Spider-Man and Captain America has almost single-handedly transformed the blockbuster moviegoing experience into the domain of superheroes and franchise entertainment. 

And that has paid off handsomely for parent company Disney, which acquired Marvel in 2009 for $4 billion. 

Since the release of 2010’s “Iron Man 2”, Marvel has helped Disney rake in $22.5 billion at the global box office. In 2022 alone, “Thor: Love and Thunder” and “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” brought in a combined $1.69 billion. 

In fact, 10 of the 29 Marvel films released before “Wakanda Forever” have grossed more than $1 billion at the global box office. 

“They created the new benchmark in filmdom in terms of what we think a blockbuster should gross,” Exhibitor Relations Co. media analyst Jeff Bock previously told CNBC Make It.

“They are the epitome of box office success in terms of how we even frame that conversation.”