[I pay for a subscription to The Ankler, which is a spiffy newsletter for anyone who likes Hollywood inside baseball. This is one segment from today’s edition.]
Since the dawn of the Marvel age, there hasn’t been a Marvel release that hasn’t been declared historic. But wanton hyperbole disclaimers notwithstanding, Black Panther is a movie that’s actually going to change some things–things important and things mundane. And it’s worth a pause from The Ankler’s vitriol festival to take note.
First, there’s the ceiling-shattering about the type of film this is, the casting, etc. All worth noting. But to me, the more important thing is what comes after. This is not an eat-your-vegetables, box-checking, begrudged project, reluctantly produced by Disney/Marvel and then dumped on the market so they can petulantly say, “See we tried that! Will you leave us alone now?!”
What makes Black Panther remarkable is not just the African-American helmer and headliners, but that they are going for gold with every piece of this. This movie could change lots of things not because it broke a ceiling for the sake of breaking a ceiling, but because they used this moment to make a great, broad, crowd-pleasing movie; to not just show that this ensemble could make a movie, but that they could make a movie that people will line up to see.
This will be, as best I can tell–correct me if I’ve missed one–the first major movie featuring an African-American cast that will open to a crossover audience. Normally these movies open with something like a 90 percent African-American audience.
This time it will be something like 20-African American, 80-everyone else. This is not a niche movie, it’s a movie for everyone that happens to be led by a different looking group of people.
This time, as one Ankler friend told us, “They made a great movie that they had to promote everywhere and it will blow down the doors of the perception that overseas audiences are racist and won’t see black-helmed movies. All the white, male, middle aged distribution execs, who normally are playing it safe, looking to meet their ultimates and make their bonuses. will be forced to spend money to distribute these movies.”
The distributors won’t ever again be able to just wave off one of these projects, sight unseen, dismissing them with the line that overseas audiences won’t come out for black leads, and have an excuse for not even trying. From now on, they’ll either have to try or they’ll have work slightly harder to come up with a new excuses.
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