Rumoured and in development for years, the adaptation of Marvel’s Black Panther comic-book series finally became officially official when studio boss Kevin Feige brought Chadwick Boseman on stage to join Robert Downey Jr. and Chris Evans on stage at the company’s recent big future announcement event. Now, as part of Variety’s Actors On Actors interview series, Boseman has talked about the role.
“I’m beyond excited,” he tells Fury’s Logan Lerman. “It’s like to the point where you feel numb and then your mind goes off into, ‘Okay, how do I achieve that?’ But I think the great thing about it is that this actual character is unique in a lot of ways. I can’t think of another character that’s the leader of a nation and is a superhero at the same time. There are a lot of different ways this story can go, you know, and ways that they can do it, so I’m really just excited about how it fits into the bigger picture of what Marvel is doing.”
At the event, Feige indicated that Boseman’s character – T’Challa, the African prince who becomes a hero as part of his royal family’s legacy – would be introduced as part of the third Captain America film, Civil War, which sees Cap go up against Tony Stark in a clash of ethics. But one of Boseman’s comments in the chat with Lerman point to the possibility that he may appear more than once before his character’s film arrives in 2017.
Asked whether there was a director for the Panther pic, Boseman said, “There’s a director on the movies that I’m introduced, but not for Black Panther. But just being a part of that discussion is huge. You know, you’re reading the comic books and you have ideas about how that’s gonna happen and you can discuss that.” Naturally, nothing has been confirmed by Marvel beyond the Civil War appearance.
**Black Panther **(the film) will stalk on to our screens on October 27, 2017.