After scoring a massive $1.3 billion at the global box office, it was really a question of when – rather than if – Marvel would issue the green light on a Black Panther sequel.
And sure enough, soon after T’Challa’s solo movie took the world by storm, the Powers That Be over at Marvel Studios confirmed that, yes, Chadwick Boseman’s stoic leader will headline another standalone film once Avengers 4 has come and gone.
The jury’s still out on when Black Panther 2 will see the light of day, but it seems Kevin Feige and Co. are in no rush, after the Marvel boss told Collider that everyone is prepared to wait until such a time as Ryan Coogler is ready to return to Wakanda.
We definitely want Ryan to come back and that’s actively being worked out right now. When will it be? A lot of it will be when Ryan wants to and not rushing anything, but I think we have an idea of when it will be. But, again, [we’re] not going to announce any post-Avengers 4 movies until hopefully after Avengers 4, which is another reason we’re not going to Comic-Con.
The fact that Feige and his team are willing to wait on Coogler before moving forward underlines the director’s importance to Black Panther and its runaway success, so this is really music to our ears. Make no mistake, Coogler’s Afrocentric epic is a special, special movie, and one that could so easily spawn a sub-par sequel when placed in the wrong hands.
Thankfully, that’s never going to happen, as Feige is confident that the meteoric success of T’Challa’s solo flick will lead to new and exciting projects moving forward.
The success of Panther is so amazing and makes us happy for so many reasons, and it certainly exceeded our lofty expectations. But our expectations were always lofty, so we had built a plan, not the least of which was centering so much of Infinity War in those locations and with some of those characters, that [its success] just says, ‘Let’s stick to this plan.’ It would have bee much more disruptive if it had not worked. Then we would have had to change a lot of what we were thinking about, but it really just solidifies and excites us to continue to move forward in the directions we’re heading in.
And surely those plans will carve out room for a Shuri/Okoye/Nakia spinoff movie, right? Time will tell. Closer to home, Marvel Studios is poised to whisk us back to Wakanda for the super-sized Avengers: Infinity War on April 27th.