Marvel casts Black Panther role, sets movie release date

At a Marvel event in Los Angeles this week, only one official casting announcement was made, that of Chadwick Boseman, 37, to play T’Challa, also known as the Black Panther in a movie of the same name. The actor grew up in South Carolina and started off doing television with guest roles on some series. […]

At a Marvel event in Los Angeles this week, only one official casting announcement was made, that of Chadwick Boseman, 37, to play T’Challa, also known as the Black Panther in a movie of the same name. The actor grew up in South Carolina and started off doing television with guest roles on some series. He made the jump to film in 2008 with ‘The Express’ and then again 2012 with ‘The Kill Hole’, before clinching the career-making role of Jackie Robinson in the movie ‘42’. His turn opposite Harrison Ford drew the actor a lot of praise. Some more roles followed and he will soon be seen in the upcoming film ‘Gods of Egypt’, currently in post-production.
During the announcement, Marvel Studios’ Kevin Feige hinted that the movie has already had the groundwork laid out in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. He said: “In ‘Captain America: The First Avenger’ when Steve Rogers chooses his shield, Howard Stark comments on it being made of vibranium, a metal found almost exclusively in Wakanda. In ‘Avengers: Age of Ultron’ we see two things that might lead us to T’Challa…Cap’s broken shield and a shot of Andy Serkis with a horrible beard that everyone is assuming is him as Ulysses Klaw, the man responsible for the death of T’Challa’s father.”
The Marvel character Black Panther was created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby in 1966 and is the first black superhero in mainstream American comics. The character is from the fictional African nation of Wakanda where he is king and he earned the title Black Panther after the murder of his father.
However, in 2005, this reporter had a chat in Abuja with visiting Hollywood star Wesley Snipes about the rumours then that he was prepping a movie on the character and his exact response was “It’s a presently unannounced project of mine based on a 60s Marvel comic book of the same name and I’ve always been attracted to the story because the protagonist is a strong African figure, a monarch who is very intelligent and powerful, who uses his gifts to protect his people from external forces.”
Snipes then shot down speculation that he was in Nigeria to do research for the movie. ‘Black Panther’ is set to be released three years from now, on November 3rd, 2017.