Black panther

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    • 17th film in the marvel cinematic universe. The highest grossing film franchise in history
    • It was directed by Ryan coogler (creed) and released and February 2018
    • The film shows us the fictional African American kingdom of wakanda which has avoided European colonisation and achieved a technological superiority through the use of a mineral called vibranium t'challa chadwick boseman must a number of foes who oppose him becoming king after the death of his father
    • Black panther (t'challa) first appeared in fantastic four #62 released July 1966
    • The film was produced by marvel studios a famous comic book brand that is also a subsidiary of the Walt Disney company
    • Black panther was extremely succesful broke records for the highest opening weekend in the USA and also performed well globally
    • The film has grossed well over 1 billion worldwide with 48% in non US countries
    • It was also one of the only superhero films to be nominated for a best picture academy award. It won 3 Oscars for costume, production and original soundtrack
    • From 15-20 th European powers colonised African and explored the continent for both resources and slave labour. Africans were branded savages by European invaders their cultures dismissed as primitive
    • During the early 20th century African Americans attempted to establish a new black cultural identity with movements such as harlem renaissance
    • The black panther party October 1966 - 82 was a political activist group established initially to provide armed monitoring of police behaviour and prevent police brutality in US. It was controversial with many panthers being arrested or killed in confrontations with the police
    • The science fiction blockbuster and superhero genres have traditionally been dominated by white male characters.
    • In the 1990s actors like will Smith and welsey snipes did break ground playing black characters but recent action films and gave rarely featured African American actors in lead roles
    • For the last 15 years marvel films have topped the box office. Though these regularly featured non white characters they were often sidekick eg. Falcon in the captain america films
    • There have also been very few superhero films with a female lead wonder woman and captain marvel being expections
    • Black cinema has traditionally consisted of issue based social realism the films of spike Lee or have been arthouse/prestige pictures (eg
      Moonlight 2016). Blade 1998 is one of the few superhero films to have a black main characters
    • In 2016 the #oscarsowhite meme drew attention to the lack of diversity in the films nominated
    • Us/European news media tend to portray Africa as an unprivilieged, developing country focusing on civil wars famine and territory
    • The victorian branding of Africa as the dark continent hadn't evolved. Very few feature films from Africa reach the mainstream and films like blood diamond 2006 and captain Phillips 2013 though featuring sympathetic African characters still portray Africa as a dangerous and barbaric place
    • Barack Obama 2009-2017 America's first African - American president created many initiatives that aided minority and women's groups from universal healthcare to college and entrepenenurship access funds for the under privileged
    • Donald Trump has vowed to reverse many of these winning support from mostly right wing Americans who considered such initiatives unfair. In addition Trump has insulted other countries including many in Africa and refused to condemn violent racist attacks in American cities
    • Worrying statistics about the amount of unarmed people of colour shot by us police led to black lives matter campaign which has utilised social media to raise awareness of an issue that has often been ignored by mainstream media
    • Black panther was produced by marvel studios who became a subsidiary of Disney in 2008 they are also the films distributor which makes this a good example of vertical integration
    • Marvel has historically sold options on individual characters or comic book titles eg. Spiderman to TV and then to paramount and who is still partly owned by Sony
    • Black panther was one of those owned fully by marvel in 2009 a team began developing t'challa and lesser known characters
    • In early 2000s marvel studios began to produce films starting with blade 1998 and x-men films 2000.
    • When Disney bought marvel they agreed to minimal creative influence over marvel products
    • In 2013 marvel also signed a deal with streaming service Netflix to develop TV series for 6 more characters including daredevil and punisher who had already been made into films. This may have caused conflict with Disney who has their own streaming channel and in 2019 Netflix cancelled their marvel shows
    • Disney the films distributor adopted a 360 degree consumer experience. The concept was to make the film into a cultural event across a variety of media and platforms and raising its profile from being another superhero film into something more politically resonant
    • Black panthers teaser trailer were shown between NBA games and a special collaboration with lexus called long live the king was shown during the superbowl
    • The films release also harnessed a political element to add gravitas. Crowd funding prone gx to buy under - privileged children a ticket won support from celebrities. The film was released during black history month.
    • There was also a welcome to wakanda catwalk show at New york fashion week and features in numerous fashion magazines. On opening weekend 44% of ticket buyers were female
    • Disney are adept at identifying nuanced demographic groups and strategies for targeting them. Many of there products are intercultural ie they strongly represent one cultural tradition but in a way that resonates with audiences from other cultural national ethnic background
    • Disney has used recent nieslen research to challenge conventional ideas about the ethnic diversity in mainstream America
    • 53% of Americans live in a multicultural or blended household. 67% indicated that they were enthusiastic about encountering and experimenting with diverse culture
    • The bbfc an independent non governmental non governmental body classifies film and video releases in the uk. However local councils have the power to overrule bbfc decisions and rate films differently. The thereotical release of black panther gained a 12a certificate
    • The film like many recent marvel films features very little romantic drama and no sex or nudity. It is fairly violent but the combat is fantastical there is a strong moral code to most of the conflict. The film was classified as pg-13 in usa
    • The teaser trailer was released in June 2017 by Disney sinner Channel abc during NBA finals. Within 24 hours it had been viewed 89 million times on YouTube
    • Just before release black panther was the most tweeted about film of 2018 with more than 5 million tweets globally. In mix march 2018 it became the most tweeted about film ever with 35 million tweets
    • Media conglomerates operate across a range of cultural industries by considering the way the film was released as part of synergy
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