They were not going to allow it to fail. It was promoted to the hilt. It would have blown up in their faces if it had failed (because of all the social justice warrior crap they put into it.) and so they pulled out all the stops to create the impression that it was going to be great.
I also had read that people were not allowed to vote it down at Rotten Tomatoes.
I think some of the numbers for it are phoney, and I wonder how big a promotion budget they put out for it?
I work in the biz here in L.A and heard NUMEROUS talk about how it “really” made money. We were at Universal City Walk, Saturday close to 5 PM. I would expect black people to be lined up, en masse but the other movie beside it was more packed (forgot what it was). TWO theaters were showing it and not one homey. How is this possible when it’s 2 weeks in..
A bud of mine who is a TV producer is close with a certain theater chain exec. From what was hinted, there were “entities” who gave the theaters BIG money and the numbers transformed into “sales”, but not actual people who saw the movie.
It was a decent movie. It really was.
The junk stuff that happens with Hollywood accounting is horribly unethical. That happens on every movie. The producers screw the crew. The distributors screw the producers. The chains screw the audience.
I suspect Black Panther had a lot of "Soros sales" of tickets online, but low actual attendance. Anyway to get those numbers?...........
The first critic to pan it was vilified for ruining its perfect score.
They do not even try to hide their biased agenda.