Black Panther has broken numerous records since it hit theaters a little over a month ago. It beat out other big-budget films like Tomb Raider and Ava DuVernay’s A Wrinkle in Time at the box office in their first weeks, but the speculation that Pacific Rim Uprising would dethrone Black Panther in its sixth weekend at the box office turned out to be true. The sequel to 2013’s Pacific Rim took the top box office spot, making $28 million its opening weekend to beat out Black Panther's $17 million, according to Variety.
Pacific Rim Uprising was co-written and directed by Steven S. DeKnight using a $150 million budget. The monster movie starring Star Wars’ John Boyega, Scott Eastwood, Jing Tian, Cailee Spaeny, and more is set 10 years after its predecessor, Pacific Rim. The original—which was directed by Guillermo del Toro and starred Idris Elba, Rinko Kikuchi, Charlie Day, Charlie Hunnam, and Robert Kazinsky—opened in July 2013 to $37 million and went on to gross $411 million at the worldwide box office. The sequel follows a new generation of Jaeger pilots trying to save humanity from evolving Kaiju monsters, as Boyega plays the son of Elba’s character Stacker Pentecost.
Even without the No. 1 spot, Black Panther is still on a roll. Its $17 million weekend landed the film one of the seven-highest sixth weekends in movie history. The film has made $631 million domestically, making it the fifth-highest grossing film in North American history ahead of The Avengers to become the highest-grossing superhero film ever in the U.S.
