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Black Panther Earns A+ CinemaScore

Hail to the king.

Marvel's Black Panther clawed its way into cinemas for Thursday previews on February 15, launching wide on Friday, February 16. With the long-awaited superhero film, which has earned rave reviews from critics and an outpouring of praise from fans, now showing in theaters across North America, film market research company CinemaScore has revealed the official rating for Black Panther. The newest Marvel film has landed the coveted A+ grade. 

"Major congratulations to [director] Ryan Coogler and [writer] Joe Robert Cole for your A+ CinemaScore grade!" the company tweeted out, attaching a photo of the film's vibrant poster to the social share. "Audiences LOVED it."

As opposed to a more traditional review-aggregate site like Rotten Tomatoes, CinemaScore rates movies using reactions from moviegoers at the start of a film's opening weekend. The company distributes in theaters across the U.S. and Canada a survey of six questions, usually at designated polling stations within each location, then collects the data from the ballots and processes a final average score. This ensures that only people who have actually seen the film in question have a voice in how they feel about it. 

The 18th installment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Black Panther is the 14th consecutive film from the studio's movie world to earn an A CinemaScore — but it's only the second to receive an A+ rating. 2012's The Avengers is the only other MCU movie to snag the highest possible score. 

Beyond its critical acclaim, Black Panther has been breaking all kinds of records at the box office. The Ryan Coogler-directed film took home an impressive $25 million during Thursday night screenings — the second-best pre-Friday pull of any Marvel movie – and is on track to yield a whopping $185 million in its three-day opening, with a grand total of $210 million over the course of the four-day Presidents' Day weekend. This projection means Black Panther will beat out Deadpool ($152.1 million opening), Thor: Ragnarok ($122.7 million opening), Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 ($146.5 million opening), and Captain America: Civil War ($171.9 million opening). It would also pounce on DC's Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, which brought in $166 million in its opening weekend. 

Additionally, Black Panther is the fourth best pre-seller of all time on Fandango. The ticket-selling site reports (via Forbes) that the only films Black Panther falls behind in ahead-of-time sales are the three most recent installments from the Star Wars pantheon: Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Star Wars: The Last Jedi, and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.

Black Panther stars Chadwick Boseman as T'Challa/Black Panther, Michael B. Jordan as Erik "Killmonger" Stevens, Lupita Nyong'o as Nakia, Danai Gurira as Okoye, Martin Freeman as Everett K. Ross, Daniel Kaluuya as W'Kabi, Letitia Wright as Shuri, Winston Duke as M'Baku, Angela Bassett as Ramonda, Forest Whitaker as Zuri, Andy Serkis as Ulysses Klaue, Florence Kasumba as Ayo, John Kani as T'Chaka, and Sterling K. Brown as N'Jobu. Isaach de Bankolé, Connie Chiume, Dorothy Steel, Danny Sapani, Sydelle Noel, Marija Abney, Janeshia Adams-Ginyard, Maria Hippolyte, Marie Mouroum, Jénel Stevens, Zola Williams, Christine Hollingsworth, Shaunette Renée Wilson, and Nabiyah Be round out the cast.