Marvel is ready to sound the drums of war.
With countless promos littering the interwebs and a review embargo in sight, the studio currently has all hands at the pump in anticipation of Black Panther.
Set to release under the looming shadow of Infinity War, T’Challa’s solo adventure is the final MCU effort to arrive before Joe and Anthony Russo redefine the superhero event movie – it reportedly features 76 characters, after all. But when it comes to Black Panther, in particular, the Ryan Coogler-directed spinoff is still set within the confines of Marvel’s lucrative franchise, and while partaking in a recent roundtable interview (h/t Cinema Blend), executive producer Nate Moore identified the ways in which it’s woven into the fabric of the MCU.
I think [Black Panther] is inherently linked because of the [Captain America:] Civil War connections and because of the [Avengers: Age of Ultron] connections with [Andy Serkis’ Ulysses] Klaue. So there are strings that we are playing with. But again, much like Doctor Strange, we felt this had enough storytelling that it could stand alone beyond those things. We wanted to give Ryan [Coogler] the freedom to tell a story that wasn’t relying on other things that were happening in the MCU. Now that doesn’t mean what happens in the film won’t have ripples in the MCU, but the film itself isn’t relying on other plot points in the MCU.
As for the future of T’Challa, Moore refused to be drawn on a possible Black Panther sequel, stating that Ryan Coogler’s imminent actioner, the first mainstream black superhero movie since Blade, has been described as a standalone title for a reason.
We try not to do that, especially with these stand-alone franchises, to make them set things up specifically. Sometimes it’s a happy accident that they do. Again, Civil War is a good example of that. It was never the intention of that movie, in the beginning, to set up Black Panther. But it was a storyline that sort of dovetailed really nicely into it and allowed us to build this stand-alone movie. I think this is similar. It’s not meant to set up anything else specifically, but, again, there are storylines in this movie that could potentially spin off to do other great things.
Following its overseas debut on February 13th, Marvel’s Black Panther will scurry into US theaters on February 16th, at which point it’ll herald our first true preview of Deadpool 2.