ALL HAIL THE KING

‘Black Panther’ Takes Top Prize at SAG Awards

Chadwick Boseman praised the groundbreaking film for allowing the cast to “create a world that exemplified a world that we wanted to see.”

Ryan Coogler’s record-breaking film Black Panther won the top prize at the Screen Actors Guild Awards on Sunday night, becoming the first superhero movie in history to claim an award for best ensemble. The film, which stars Chadwick Boseman, Danai Gurira, Michael B. Jordan, Lupita Nyong’o, Angela Bassett, and others, beat out other box office hits like A Star Is Born and Crazy Rich Asians to win Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture. Bosewick, who accepted the award on behalf of the cast, delivered a powerful speech about what the film means for minority actors who have been underrepresented in Hollywood. “We know what it’s like to be told there’s not a screen for you to be featured on, a stage for you to be featured on,” he said. “We know what it’s like to be the tail, but not the head. We know what it’s like to be beneath, but not above.” The cast was devoted to the film, he said, not for the sake of awards or in the hopes of earning “a billion dollars,” but because “we knew that we had something special that we wanted to give the world—that we could be full human beings in the roles that we were playing. That we could create a world that exemplified a world that we wanted to see,” he said. The film broke numerous records after its release in February 2018, claiming the biggest opening weekend ever for a film not directed by a white man and the biggest global debut for a movie with a predominantly black cast. It opened domestically to a whopping $218 million and went on to rake in $1.35 billion in global ticket sales.

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