Following the death of leading man Chadwick Boseman in August after a four-year battle against colon cancer that 99% of people had no idea he was even fighting, nobody would have batted an eyelid if Marvel Studios delayed Black Panther 2 indefinitely. After all, the sequel to one of the most popular entries in the MCU had been irrevocably changed, and the project already came burdened with huge expectations given the impact that the first movie had on both cinema and society as a whole.
Of course, fans campaigned for Letitia Wright’s Shuri to inherit the mantle as she’s already done in the comic books, and the news that the start of production had only been pushed back by four months to July 2021 was certainly a shock, but a very welcome one. Wright seemed primed to lead the Black Panther franchise into the future, but the actress has since incurred the wrath of cancel culture.
A series of tweets in which she shared an anti-vax video and went down the subsequent rabbit hole generated all sorts of backlash from every corner of the internet, and while the 27 year-old has since issued a response to try and stem the tide of negativity, it was also noticed that she liked another tweet from someone calling for Black Panther 2 to be canceled immediately. Which is certainly a bit odd and hard to explain.
Anyone that’s even marginally famous should be fully aware that people are going to comb through every minute detail of their social media activity, so having seized the headlines for all the wrong reasons, Wright will now inevitably face accusations that she doesn’t actually want to make Black Panther 2. Then again, there’s always a chance that this latest firestorm blows over and gets completely forgotten about by next week.