Interestingly, the Marvel Studios panel at Comic-Con yesterday didn’t peak with the grand unveiling of pretty much the entire cast of Avengers: Doomsday, including Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, a previously unconfirmed Hayley Atwell, and three distinct groups of actors spread across three different stages in Hall (a first for the Con). Nor did it peak with the debut of footage from Doomsday.
Instead, Kevin Feige gave pride of place to a very special announcement, bringing Ryan Coogler out to reveal that Black Panther III not only is happening, but has a release date of December 15, 2028 (so one year after Avengers: Secret Wars rewires the MCU).
And it also has a new Black Panther. As castmates Letitia Wright and Winston Duke looked on, Coogler confirmed that Black Panther III would see the debut of the adult version of T’Challa (aka Toussaint), the child of Chadwick Boseman’s T’Challa and Lupita Nyong’o’s Nakia, who was introduced in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. And that this new T’Challa would be played by… David Jonsson, the British actor who has been sensational in everything from Rye Lane (if you haven’t seen Rye Lane, see Rye Lane) to Alien Romulus, The Long Walk to Industry. Jonsson came out on stage to a rapturous reception, and later Feige told Empire exclusively how his casting came about after what we presumed was a long search.
“[Ryan Coogler] called me afterwards and said, ‘He’s the guy’.”
“I’ll give you the real scoop,” he said. “We hadn’t started a search yet. Ryan was working on Sinners, and when Ryan works on a project he’s all in. So the presumption very much was we would sit with him after Sinners came out, after the Academy campaign. We were waiting ’til after the Academy Awards to sit with Ryan and begin that process.
“A month and a half or so before that process, he called me and said, ‘I found him’. I said, ‘What do you mean?’ He goes, ‘I found him. He’s this guy, David Jonsson.’ He mentioned his movies. I had seen some of them. I watched more. He goes, ‘I’m going to meet him.’ He had a secret meeting with him under cloak of darkness in a hotel somewhere, and called me afterwards and said, ‘He’s the guy, he’s the guy, I felt it. I felt it in my soul. He’s a good man, and he is the next Black Panther.’ And I got chills, and I got a little welled-up and said, ‘Let’s do it’. So we’ve been sitting on this secret for a good five or six months.”
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One thing that seems to shine through in a lot of Jonsson’s roles – and indeed this writer’s interactions with him over the past few years – is an innate sense of decency that would appear to make him the perfect candidate to step into the shoes of Chadwick Boseman, who also possessed that sense. It’s going to be exciting to see him take on the mantle of the Black Panther two years from now, even if it does bring with it a host of questions: what timey-wimey stuff is going to happen that will see T’Challa achieve adulthood so quickly? What does this mean for the current Black Panther, Letitia Wright’s Shuri? Is she still going to be on the board after Secret Wars? Her presence on stage last night would indicate yes, but much remains to be seen, including what this T’Challa’s relationship is going to be like with his aunt, with M’Baku, and with Wakanda itself. Exciting times ahead.
