‘Black Panther: Wakanda Forever’ Most Watched Marvel Premiere WW On Disney+, Samba TV Measures 2.1M U.S. Households

Regardless of your thoughts on Marvel Studios’ latest film, “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania,” there’s no one who can deny that the film is VFX-heavy. From the moment the main characters venture into the Quantum Realm (about 15 minutes into the film), there isn’t a moment on screen that doesn’t include some sort of VFX work.

Rihanna will officially be heading to the Oscars next month.The singer, having recently performed this year’s NFL Super Bowl halftime show, will be performing her Original Song nominee ‘Lift Me Up’ on the Academy Awards stage.‘Lift Me Up’ was performed and written by Rihanna alongside Black Panther: Wakanda Forever director Ryan Coogler, Tems, and Ludgwig Goransson, the film’s composer.Last October, Coogler explained how he convinced Rihanna to join the Marvel project, after not releasing new music sincce her 2016 album ‘Anti’.“I can’t take sole credit for that,” Coogler said, per Metro. “We got an incredible composer, Ludwig Goransson, who is also a music producer, he’s got a great reputation.

Ludwig Göransson Composer Ludwig Göransson won an Oscar in 2019 for his “Black Panther” score, and is again nominated for the original song Academy Award for “Lift Me Up” from the sequel, “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” along with Rihanna, Tems and director-writer Ryan Coogler. In the film, Coogler wrestles with the loss of Chadwick Boseman, T’Challa, the original Black Panther, the impact of that loss on the other characters, including T’Challa’s sister Shuri (Letitia Wright) and introduces audiences to a new, underwater civilization in the Gulf of Mexico, Talokan, led by Namor (Tenoch Huerta). Göransson reflects on how the song came together: Four years ago, while I was recording in Senegal, I was introduced to a beautiful West African instrument called the kora. The first seeds of “Lift Me Up” came from that trip, and I used a part of the melody in the first “Black Panther” when T’Challa travels to the ancestral plain for the first time and sees his father who has passed on. Hearing it now in a song meant to memorialize Chadwick Boseman himself has been both devastating and cathartic.

electric Super Bowl halftime performance earlier this month, Oscar nominee Rihanna will perform at the awards ceremony on March 12.The “Shut Up and Drive” crooner, 35, will sing “Lift Me Up” — the theme from the Marvel film “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced Thursday.Rihanna — who is pregnant with her second child — wrote the song with Tems, “Black Panther” director Ryan Coogler and Ludwig Göransson.The track is nominated for the Best Original Song Oscar. It’s Rihanna’s first Academy Award nomination.The other nominees for Best Original Song are “Applause” from “Tell It Like a Woman” by Diane Warren, “Hold My Hand” from “Top Gun: Maverick” by Lady Gaga and BloodPop, “Naatu Naatu” from “RRR” by M.M.

The Oscars are getting a big dose of RiRi.

Rihanna is tackling another first! On Thursday, it was announced that the singer will perform her Oscar-nominated single, «Lift Me Up,» from  at the 95th Academy Awards.The nine-time GRAMMY winner earned her first Oscar nomination for the film soundtrack's lead single, which plays during the end credits of the  sequel. The song was penned by singer Tems, Oscar winner Ludwig Göransson, Rihanna and director Ryan Coogler, and serves as a eulogy to Chadwick Boseman, who played King T'Challa, aka Black Panther, and died at the age of 43 after a four-year battle with colon cancer. In the Best Original Song category, the song is up against Diane Warren's «Applause» (Lady Gaga's «Hold My Hand» (NTR and Ram Charan's«Naatu Naatu» (and Son Lux, Mitski and David Byrne's «This Is a Life» (The release of «Lift Me Up» marked the soon-to-be mom of two's first single in six years and the first foray in the next era of Rihanna's iconic career. The single picked up a Golden Globe nomination for Best Original Song (Motion Picture), but ultimately lost to «Naatu Naatu» from . In October 2022, Coogler opened up to ET about being «forever grateful» for Rihanna's contribution to the emotional track — and for coming out of musical hibernation. «I'll say this, I didn't get [Rihanna] to do anything.

Oscar luncheon magnet Tom Cruise, all Emmy and Oscar un-nominated for their work over the past year but represented in the Critics Choice Super Award nominations, honoring horror, superhero, science fiction and action movies and television series.Oscar nominees such as Michelle Yeoh, Ke Huy Quan and Stephanie Hsu (“Everything Everywhere All at Once”) and Angela Bassett (“Black Panther: Wakanda Forever”) are also repped here, as well as Colin Farrell, nominated twice for two of his other 2022 films, “After Yang” and “The Batman”. (Co-nominee Brendan Fraser managed a nod for the HBO Max series “Doom Patrol as well).

EXCLUSIVE: ABC is hitting a stride with its Wednesday night comedies. The premiere of Not Dead Yet and the Valentine’s Day episode of Abbott Elementary both drew solid numbers for the network in delayed viewing.

While Hollywood chased pulp-era nostalgia, smaller superhero films centered on Black heroes to relative success. The industry spent the 1990s mistaking the success of Tim Burton’s “Batman,” which often played like a hardboiled post-World War II film noir, for an interest in 1930s and 1940s pulp heroes. Whether this was a willful pursuit of nostalgic super heroics to avoid reckoning with present-tense issues or just a matter of effects technology not yet catching up to the needs of most modern-day superheroes, the post-“Batman” comic book superhero movie was dominated by sequels to Burton’s feature and period piece wannabes.

The NAACP kicked off the first night of the 54th NAACP Image Awards honoring the likes of Beyoncé, Rihanna and the music of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.

marked the end of Phase Four in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it was not the end of the MCU, or even the Multiverse Saga. In fact, the ever-expanding continues on as it explores the lives familiar characters and introduces new heroes (and major villains) both on film and television, with projects slated through 2025.In 2022, audiences were treated to  as well as  and the sequel in theaters, while , and  all debuted on Disney+.

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever star Angela Bassett has said she is “sorry for” Anthony Hopkins after he spoke negatively about his time acting in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.Speaking to The New Yorker in 2021, Hopkins criticised the experience of working in front of a green screen, and once wrote “No acting required” on the front of his script for Thor.The Silence Of The Lambs star played Odin in three MCU films: 2011’s Thor, 2013’s Thor: The Dark World, and 2017’s Thor: Ragnarok.“On Thor, you have Chris Hemsworth – who looks like Thor – and a director like Kenneth Branagh, who is so certain of what he wants,” the actor explained.“They put me in armour; they shoved a beard on me. Sit on the throne; shout a bit.

“You” Season 4, Part 1 debuted Tuesday on Netflix’s English TV List in the No. 1 spot as the most-viewed title last week less than a week after its release.As fans binged the five episodes of the season’s first half, which follows Joe Goldberg’s (Penn Badgley) next chapter as he becomes involved with London’s elite society under the alias of Professor Jonathan Moore, “You” Season 4 hit 92.07 million hours viewed from Feb.

as TheWrap first reported.

Rihanna was the only pop girl in the world that anyone was talking about over the weekend - and, it turns out, for very good reason.

Rihanna‘s heavily-anticipated halftime show performance.According to statistics gathered from both Nielsen Fast National data and Adobe Analytics, as reported by Fortune, the performance averaged 118.7million viewers. This officially makes it the second most-watched Super Bowl halftime show of all time, behind Katy Perry‘s 2015 performance – which still holds the record at an average of 121million.Furthermore, Rihanna’s appearance out-performed the Super Bowl itself as a whole, which saw the Kansas City Chiefs defeat the Philadelphia Eagles.

Streamers hoping to capture audiences with their latest television series have a limited window to do so, according to a new report from Samba TV.

EXCLUSIVE: Blockbuster hits Black Panther and The Woman King have cleared the path for Netflix to succeed with Jada Pinkett Smith-narrated docu-drama African Queens, according to the show’s exec.

Filmmaker and producer Ryan Coogler introduced Angela Bassett at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, where she won the Montecito Award for “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.”For almost 15 minutes, Coogler explained how Bassett was influential to him when he was just a five-year-old boy watching “Boyz n the Hood” with his father in 1991. From that movie to Spike Lee’s “Malcolm X” to “What’s Love Got To Do With It” to “Waiting to Exhale” – Coogler said watching Bassett in those movies helped him grow an appreciation for the arts.“I didn’t understand it then, I didn’t know I wanted to be a filmmaker,” Coogler said.

“Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” is the most-watched Marvel movie premiere ever on Disney+ worldwide, based on hours streamed in the first five days, Disney announced Monday. The Ryan Coogler-directed sequel made its streaming debut on Wednesday, including on Walt Disney streamer Disney+.