Following his introduction in this year's Captain America: Civil War, Chadwick Boseman's Black Panther is set to return with his standalone movie on February 16, 2018. Ryan Coogler will helm the movie from a script penned by him and Joe Robert Cole. Michael B. Jordan, Lupita Nyong'o and Danai Gurira are on board with Boseman to play some of the major characters in the eighteenth Marvel Cinematic Universe installment.
With the Black Panther movie still a few months away from kicking off production, not much more is known about the project. In a recent interview with CBR, Chadwick Boseman doesn't delve deeply into details, but he does offer some idea about what to expect from the movie.
The actor says that the Marvel movies he has liked the most are "the ones that are funny", such as Ant-Man. However, he adds:
But for me, most of the time the darker superhero movies are the ones that I gravitate toward, that I love the most. So I'm glad that I'm not in an Ant-Man. I'm glad that the tone of [Black Panther] may be a little grittier. I just wanted to establish that from the beginning, that that's what we were doing.
According to Chadwick Boseman, people have seen black superheroes in comic books and in animated series, but when they see "real people doing it", it "changes something inside of" them. He explains:
It's going to be a big deal because there's not just black people or people of African descent that want to see it; I think everybody wants to see it. That's the beautiful thing. I truly believe there are more people who want to see it than don't want to see it, especially after being here.
Following the death of his father in Captain America: Civil War, Boseman's T'Challa is now the new king of Wakanda. And in the Black Panther movie, we won't be seeing him as "a selfish ruler…a dictator…(or) a person that does things purely for his own gain". According to the actor:
…He does have a heroic aspect at the heart of a hero; of a leader. You can pull for him, because he's merciful. And it leaves room also for him to do things that are not necessarily perfect.
Boseman also reveals that he has personally known Ta-Nehisi Coates, writer of the current Black Panther comic book series, for years. The actor believes that the writer's work, either directly or indirectly, is "already affecting where the film goes", and he thinks the film is affecting the writer, as well.
