Crowd just wild about Black Panther
SAN DIEGO Black Panther stole the show Saturday night at Marvel Studios’ Comic-Con presentation, outshining the Ant-Man, Thor and even the ultimate Avengers team-up, Infinity War.
Fans went wild for the exclusive sneak peek at the upcoming superhero pic, featuring star Chadwick Boseman’s T ’Challa intercepting a sketchy vibranium trade between Andy Serkis’s Klaw and Martin Freeman’s Everett. Set in an elegant, Japanese-inspired casino, the deal goes haywire and T’ Challa and his security detail (Lupita Nyong ’o and Danai Gurira) jump to action in their evening gowns to retrieve the precious goods.
The clip was followed by the trailer for the film from Creed director Ryan Coogler and the 6,500 souls in the audience erupted into deafening cheers at the sight of T’ Challa morphing into Black Panther.
The film finds T’ Challa returning to his home of Wakanda after the death of his father, the king.
“He’s still mourning his father’s death. It’s a transition period that gets interrupted, and he’s struggling with the type of king he wants to be,” said Boseman.
Coogler, Boseman, Nyong ’o, Gurira, Serkis and others were on hand in San Diego to talk about the film, out Feb. 16, 2019.
Nyong’o described her character as a spy who goes undercover to report back to Wakanda about what is going on in the world. “Wakanda is an isolated nation,” Nyong ’o said. “The world does not need to know what’s going on in Wakanda.”
Coogler said he’d always had a fondness for comic books, and found Black Panther at a pivotal moment.
“I grew up as black kid in the Bay Area and grew up with comic books and it didn’t matter what colour the superheroes were. I read X-Men, I read Spider Man,” Coogler said.
Then he searched for a character that looked like him and he stumbled on Black Panther.
Marvel Studios also teased its third Thor film, Thor: Ragnarok, which has a different and more irreverent tone from previous instalments. “I’ve played this character five times,” Chris Hemsworth said. “Me, personally, I got a little bored and thought we’ve got to try something a little different ... Push the envelope, take it to another level.”
So they cut his hair, take his hammer away and pit him against Jeff Goldblum and Cate Blanchett.
The movie hits theatres in November.