It’s been a rough road forBlack Panther 2,but after COVID-19 delays, film-industry chaos, and the unexpected death of its lead actor in August, it’s scheduled to finally start production in July.
BP2will again star Letitia Wright, Lupita Nyong’o, Winston Duke, and Angela Bassett, with Ryan Coogler returning as director and writer. Tenoch Huerta (Narcos: Mexico) is reportedly in talks to join the castas an unspecified antagonist. Martin Freeman has not yet been confirmed, at time of writing, as reprising his role as Everett Ross.
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This indicates that Marvel Studios has figured out what it’ll do in the wake of Chadwick Boseman’s passing, which has been a subject of intense discussion in the last few weeks. Some fans have speculated thatBP2will take a cue from the comics andpromote T’Challa’s sister Shuri(Wright) to the role of the Black Panther, but anything is possible.
Another option would be to introduce Kevin Cole, who was created by Christopher Priest and Dan Fraga in 2002, in the last few issues of the third volume of theBlack Panthercomic. Cole is a second-generationcop in the NYPD, nicknamed “Kasper” by his colleagues for being the light-skinned, mixed-race son of a famous black police detective. When Cole gets suspended without pay, he ends up using a combination of stolen Wakandan technology and his own skills to masquerade as the Black Panther, in order to pursue an investigation into his supervisor’s criminal ties.
(This isn’t as weird as it sounds. Due to the Marvel Universe beingextremelyfocused on New York City, T’Challa has spent a lot of time there in the comics, including a couple of stints where he posed as an ordinary schoolteacher. It’s not entirely unprecedented that a simple street gang might end up having to deal with the Black Panther, rather than Daredevil or Luke Cage.)
Priest, who also originally created several supporting characters for T’Challa who would later move into the MCU, like Nakia (Nyong’o) and Okoye (Guerra), intended the Kasper Cole storyline as a sort of superhero riff on Denzel Washington’s 2001 corrupt-cop filmTraining Day.While Cole has fallen into obscurity in the last few years, his story is virtuallycustom-made for the MCU.
Marvel VP Victoria Alonso confirmed recently that whateverBP2plans to do without Boseman, it will not involve any kind of digital duplicate, such as the process that allowed Peter Cushing to make a cameo inRogue One22 years after his death. The general tone out of Marvel Studios seems to suggest thatBP2will serve double duty asa memorial project for Boseman, much in the same way asFurious 7did for the late Paul Walker.
Other Marvel films that start production in 2021, assuming there isn’t another industry-demolishing coronavirus spike, knock on wood, include Taika Waititi’sThor: Love and Thunderin January and theShe-HulkandMoon KnightTV series on Disney+. James Gunn’sGuardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, which is expected to be Gunn’s last hurrah with the characters, is planned to begin shooting near the end of the year, alongside Peyton Reed’sAnt-Man 3,whichadds Jonathan Majors as an unspecified villain.
The Marvel Cinematic Universe is currently scheduled to start its “Phase 4” in 2021, withBlack Widowon May 7th,Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Ringson July 9th, andEternalson November 11th.
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