Marvel Will Not Recast Chadwick Boseman’s ‘Black Panther’ Character

Entertainment

By Kelton Brooks Published: November 16, 2021

Marvel Will Not Recast Chadwick Boseman’s ‘Black Panther’ Character

FILE - In this Jan. 29, 2018 file photo, Chadwick Boseman, a cast member in "Black Panther," poses at the premiere of the film in Los Angeles. Boseman, who played Black icons Jackie Robinson and James Brown before finding fame as the regal Black Panther in the Marvel cinematic universe, died of colon cancer on Aug. 28, 2020 in Los Angeles. He was buried on Sept. 3, in Belton, South Carolina, about 11 miles from his hometown of Anderson, according to a death certificate obtained Monday, Sept. 14 by The Associated Press. (Photo by Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP, File)

In Summary

Marvel’s VP of Development, Nate Moore, said on Monday: “You will not see T’Challa in the MCU 616 universe.”

There is no replacement for Chadwick Boseman. There is no replacing T’Challa. There is no way to replace The Black Panther and Marvel knows this.

“I’m being quite honest. You will not see T’Challa in the MCU 616 universe,” said Nate Moore, Marvel’s VP of Development, who spoke about the next phase in the box office movies. “We couldn’t do it.”

Boseman died in 2020 after a four-year battle with colon cancer.

“When Chad passed, it was a real conversation we had with [director Ryan] Coogler about, ‘What do we do?’ And it was a fast conversation,” Moore said. “It wasn’t weeks, it was minutes of we had to figure out how to move that franchise on without that character. Because I think we all feel so much of T’Challa in the MCU on the screen … is tied to Chadwick’s performance.”

During the time of Boseman’s death, Coogler was working on the new script. He said it was tough moving forward without his friend and the role of The Black Panther that was specifically meant for Boseman.

“It’s difficult,” Coogler said. “You’ve got to keep going when you lose loved ones. I know Chad wouldn’t have wanted us to stop. He was somebody who was so about the collective. Black Panther, that was his movie. He was hired to play that role before anybody else was even thought of, before I was hired, before any of the actresses were hired.”

Marvel began to film the sequael, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, 10 months after Boseman’s passing.

“On that set, he was all about everybody else,” Coogler continued. “Even though he was going through what he was going through, he was checking in on them, making sure they were good. If we cut his coverage, he would stick around and read lines off-camera [to help other actors with their performances]. So, it would be harder for me to stop. Truthfully. I’d feel him yelling at me, like, ‘What are you doing?’ So, you keep going.”