Black Panther will introduce a number of African-American Marvel Comics characters when it opens in theaters on February 16. But director Ryan Coogler recently revealed that at one time, he very nearly added one more.
Coogler told CinemaBlend that early in the script-writing process, he and screenwriter Joe Robert Cole flirted with the idea of including Elijah Bradley, aka the second Patriot. However, it turned out that making room for him in the movie would distract from Wakanda, which is a main plot device for Black Panther:
Crazy enough, for comic book fans, we toyed with the character Patriot for a little bit. Early on, we were interested to get our hands on him, Joe and I, but that ended up going away so we could focus on Wakanda a little more.
Allan Heinberg and Jim Cheung introduced the Elijah Bradley version of Patriot in April 2005’s Young Avengers #1. Elijah was the grandson of Isaiah Bradley, who was an alternate version of Captain America. The character’s arc in the comic books was interesting, but he was never connected in any way with Wakanda. Attempting to integrate him into the upcoming Marvel Cinematic Universe installment would have been incongruous, to say the least.
While Patriot wasn’t a good fit for Black Panther, Coogler managed to insert a host of other characters into the movie:
The ones that you see were kind of always there. M’Baku, Killmonger, T’Challa, Nakia, Okoye, Shuri, Ramonda, Klaue, Everett Ross…They were always in every draft. So we had to make sure that they all had arcs, and it had something to do with that.
If critics’ first reactions are any indication, Coogler and his massive cast have won them over. Moviegoers share in that enthusiasm, as evidenced in this tweet from Fandango's Erik Davis:
BREAKING: #BlackPanther is making history at @Fandango and is now outpacing ALL superhero movies in advance ticket sales, eclipsing 2016's BATMAN v SUPERMAN. pic.twitter.com/bWlhkCYR2K
"” ErikDavis (@ErikDavis) January 31, 2018
