Image courtesy Babak Fakhamzadeh
Marvel's recent film, Black Panther, was long overdue both in the way it was created and in the way it met market demand.
The film was racially ground-breaking. The cast was largely black. The director was black. The antagonist was black. And, of course, our lead superhero, the Black Panther, was… black. According to a TIME article, "Hollywood has never produced a blockbuster this splendidly black", and it's surprising.
Why did it take so long for American media to get here? Black history and culture is as influential to society as that from any race or ethnicity. From an equity standpoint, you would have thought that black kids growing up in American would have had a black superhero to 'marvel' at by now.
Beyond that, even by looking at it from a purely economic standpoint, the numbers should have warranted a film like this long ago. In the U.S., African-Americans make up a considerable portion of the population. Globally, 1/6+ of the population has African roots.
In other words, theoretically, the market is enormous. There's a reason why Nigeria-based Nollywood is the 2nd largest film industry in the world, and Hollywood realized this when Black Panther shot off the charts. It became the uncontested highest-grossing film of 2018 and, currently, it is the 9th highest grossing film in history. Good for Disney and good for all of us.