Black Panther Dominates Social Media

Screen Rant

Black Panther Dominates Social Media After Trailer Release

By Andrew Auger

Published Jun 12, 2017

Black Panther dominates social media analytics from the past week, following the release of the Marvel Studios film's teaser trailer.

Director Ryan Coogler's Black Panther wound up easily dominating the social media landscape for this past week. Marvel fans were treated to a pleasant surprise at the end of last week, when the Black Panther teaser trailer dropped during Game 4 of the NBA Finals.

The two-minute teaser generated tons of excitement across the Internet, as everyone got their first look at the stylish solo film for Chadwick Boseman's T'Challa, who made his impressive debut in Captain America: Civil War last summer. Stat tracking since the teaser's release has shown that not only is Black Panther currently one of the buzz-worthy upcoming releases, but it's the most talked about movie.

Variety reports that Black Panther topped all other films in measured social media chatter last week, besting other highly anticipated titles like Spider-Man: Homecoming, Transformers: the Last Knight and Star Wars: the Last Jedi. The film was mentioned in 466,000 new conversations throughout sites like Twitter and Facebook, a tally compiled by the analytics team at the media-measurement firm comScore (via their PreAct measuring service).

To compare Black Panther to other recent and upcoming superhero titles, Spider-Man: Homecoming's most recent trailer earned it mentions in over 120,000 conversations. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2's first trailer back in October of 2016 earned it 108,000 new conversations. Even compared to the competition, Black Panther thrived, as the first trailer for Justice League earned 201,000 new conversations when it was released back in March.

The trailer gave anticipating fans plenty of reasons to be excited, teasing the King of Wakanda in action and a primarily African-American cast butt-kicking to the tune of rap duo Run the Jewels' "Legend Has It". First looks were given to characters played by major actors like Michael B. Jordan, Lupita N'Yongo, and Forest Whitaker, along with the return of Andy Serkis' Klaw from Avengers: Age of Ultron and Martin Freeman's Everett Ross from Civil War.

Even with all of these new bells and whistles, the titular hero is the main draw here, and Boseman looks as utterly compelling and regal as he was when he threatened to steal the show from a mountain of super powered titans in Civil War. It certainly doesn't hurt that Coogler is behind the camera, with two proper successes in Fruitvale Station and Creed firmly under his belt. The cast and crew behind the film, plus Marvel's mostly rock-solid track record, would be enough to have gotten most comic-book fans excited. This new footage only raised awareness and excitement for the film during a major sporting event watched by millions across the country.

With so much social media buzz and hype behind the title, it seems reasonable to expect that the Black Panther trailer will be attached theatrically to Spider-Man: Homecoming's release in July. If not that film, it'll definitely be attached to November's Thor: Ragnarok (at that point we'll most likely be getting a new trailer).