Director Ryan Coogler (‘Creed’) is co-writing Marvel’s ‘Black Panther’ movie
Ryan Coogler is objectively awesome, coming off of Creed and Fruitvale Station. We as an unwashed mass of homogenous MCU fanboy filth don’t deserve him directing a movie, but we’re getting it. And since we’re being spoiled, I suppose we might as well have Coogler co-writing the movie too.
While a lot of the early reactions to Captain America: Civil War praised the new depiction of Spider-Man, that doesn’t mean Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman) isn’t every bit as entertaining as the web slinger. With a sufficient amount of screen time and, more importantly, a surprising amount of character depth, Marvel should have no problem getting unfamiliar audiences invested in this character.
Below, Marvel studio president Kevin Feige tells us a bit about the upcoming Black Panther standalone film, which is being helmed by Ryan Coogler, and explains why it doesn’t necessarily have to be the Black Panther origin story.
T’Challa is Black Panther from the start of Captain America: Civil War. Screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely provide just enough backstory on the character to give the audience a sense of who he is, where he’s from, and what he stands for. The Russo brothers’ film establishes plenty about the hero, so we had to ask: is an origin story even necessary?
While interviewing Kevin Feige, although he didn’t explicitly confirm whether Coogler’s film is an origin story, he didn’t make it sound like one either:
We can [move forward from here]. We can deal with the aftereffects of Captain America: Civil War and going back to Wakanda, and he’s dealing with a geopolitical landscape that’s completely different now. That’ll certainly set him off in his own movie.
Black Panther faces a real conflict in Captain America: Civil War. His involvement in the story is personal, so it doesn’t feel his like his presence was simply crammed into the narrative to set up Coogler’s film. That personal struggle — which should go unspoiled — could play a role in Black Panther: