How Tyler Perry helped make ‘Black Panther’ possible
How the 'Madea' filmmaker linked the Peach City to the Kingdom of Wakanda
Black Panther is the biggest, Blackest movie so far this year, and everyone is celebrating its record-breaking success.
Tyler Perry got in on the celebrations, too, taking to Instagram with a shot of his Atlanta studio to reveal that parts of the movie had been filmed there.
“Welcome to Wakanda! You wanna talk about black history! These are the new stages at Tyler Perry Studios. And guess what the first film to shoot on one of the stages was?! #BlackPanther!!! #WakandaForever @chadwickboseman@lupitanyongo #ryancoogler,” he wrote.
Atlanta’s relationship to Wakanda
Atlanta definitely has a big stake in Black Panther’s extraordinary success because a large portion of the Marvel Comics blockbuster was filmed there. The Atlanta Journal Constitution reported that almost $84 million of the $200 million budget for the film was spent in Georgia. About 3,000 Georgians were employed while the film shot from August 2016 to November 2017, the state’s economic development department said.
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To solidify Atlanta’s Wakandan link, Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport’s official Twitter account posted a picture of a terminal showing a flight schedule for departure to Wakanda.
The bags are packed ?? #WakandaForever pic.twitter.com/X8U554vWxh
— Atlanta Airport (@ATLairport) February 19, 2018
The account also posted several hilarious replies to users who wanted details on the magical flight. Check out some of the exchanges here.
“We’re incredibly proud that Atlanta has such an important role in the film industry,” Reese McCranie, Hartsfield-Jackson’s director of policy and communications, told the AJC.
“We love keeping our customers engaged,” McCraine said. “And it’s important for us to be part of the cultural conversation.”
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Atlanta may boast a financial link to Wakanda, but everybody knows the fictional country’s Afro-futurist look is based on the Motherland.
“The country is rendered as a Pan-African pastiche; viewers of Black Panther can point to Ghanaian fabrics and Zulu headdresses, Ethiopian tribal body markings and a prominent Bantu tongue,” as the Washington Post described it.
The film hauled in $202 million in its opening weekend, placing it behind only Star Wars: The Force Awakens as the second highest four-day gross of all time, according to Boxofficemojo.com.
