• by Wayne Friedman , November 13, 2022

Walt Disney’ big franchise movie “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” delivered a massive, and expected, total of $180 million for its U.S./Canada opening-day weekend -- the best November result ever for a theatrical movie, according to Comscore.

“Panther” also posted the second-best overall 2022 result behind another Disney/Marvel Studio film “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” ($187.4 million)

Comscore says the movie took in $14.2 million from 405 IMAX screens -- the biggest domestic IMAX opening ever in November. Rich Gelfond, chief executive officer of IMAX, believes the movie will jumpstart the global box office ahead through 2023.

Still, this “Panther” edition fell a bit short of the initial $202 million U.S./Canada weekend opening in 2018. Comscore says the latest edition ranks in 13th place of all time among all domestic movie openings.

This “Panther” dominated the airwaves when it came to national TV movie advertising -- spending $24.3 million since September 29. That produces 1.5 billion impressions for 4,763 commercial airings.

NFL football took the lion’s share of the TV program time -- with major TV networks, ABC, Fox, ESPN, and NBC, getting big pieces of the media budget.

Two movies in their fourth week -- Warner Bros.’ “Black Adam” and Universal Picture’s “Ticket to Paradise” were way back in second and third place -- at $8.6 million and $6.1 million, respectively.