Ryan Coogler’s Marvel superhero flick will be first to show as country ends 35 years cinema ban.

It would seem that Marvel’s Black Panther is destined to be remembered as a groundbreaking movie in many, many ways. Having already exceeded $1.2bn in receipts around the world, and thus becoming the biggest movie ever by a black director – and smashing all-comer February- and non-sequel opening records as it got there – it will now become the first movie to officially screen in Saudi Arabia after a ban lasting 35 years.

The Hollywood Reporter is, well… reporting that the will get a gala premiere on April 18 in Riyadh at its shiny, new AMC-branded cinema, the first to open after the ban was lifted in December.  The 620-seater theatre is currently in the final stages – we hope – of being converted from symphony hall to picture-palace in the city’s King Abdullah Financial District. It will be, the Reporter says, “just the first of hundreds planned to open in the next decade”.

Black Panther will get a five-day run in Riyadh, after which it will be replaced by Marvel and Disney’s next big thing, Avengers: Infinity War.