Marvel’s Black Panther: all the trailers, updates, and commentary

Black Panther director Ryan Coogler has signed on to direct a sequel to the blockbuster film. The Hollywood Reporter says that he has “quietly closed a deal to write and direct the sequel.”

Disney and Marvel haven’t officially greenlit a sequel to Black Panther, but it’s almost assured given the first film’s critical acclaim and the enormous box office haul it pulled in when it was released earlier this year. According to THR, Coogler and his team “took its time in making a deal, which occurred under the radar some time ago.” The film is reportedly in development and could begin production in late 2019 or early 2020.

Marvel’s Black Panther will be the first film shown in Saudi Arabian movie theaters in 35 years. The Guardian reports that the film will kick off on April 18th with a gala premiere in Riyadh. Saudi Arabia banned public movie screenings 35 years ago due to religious concerns, but the decision to reverse that ban was made in December of 2017. Sony’s The Emoji Movie screened in the country earlier this year along with other animated films, but those showings took place in a state-run cultural center, rather than the permanent theaters that will be hosting Black Panther.

Black Panther has dominated the box office since its release on February 16th, with the film crossing the $1 billion mark worldwide in March. The film’s April 18th premiere will take place in AMC’s first Saudi Arabian theater, built in the King Abdullah financial district. The building was originally intended as a symphony hall, and so its main theater will include 500 leather seats, orchestra and balcony levels, and marble bathrooms. “We think it’s going to be the prettiest movie theater in the world,” AMC CEO Adam Aron said.

One of the major highlights of Marvel’s Black Panther was the Dora Milaje, the all-female special forces team that protects the secretive African country Wakanda. This week, Marvel announced that the characters will get their own arc in a three-part comic series, Wakanda Forever, which will be written by Black Panther: Long Live the King and Binti trilogy author Nnedi Okorafor.

The group is a team of special forces soldiers dedicated to protecting Wakanda led by General Okoye (played by The Walking Dead’s Danai Gurira), who in the film helps rescue Wakandan spy Nakia when an undercover assignment goes bad, aids T’Challa in the capture of Ulysses Klaue, and later plays a pivotal role in helping him reclaim the throne.

Marvel’s Black Panther is continuing its winning streak at the box office. This weekend, it crossed the $1 billion mark in its worldwide box-office totals, after beating out the four-day totals of Disney’s last big movie, Star Wars: The Last Jedi.

Box Office Mojo says the latest installment of the Marvel Cinematic Universe is the first to stay in the top box-office slot for four straight weeks. The film was helped by a solid debut in China this weekend, where it earned $66.5 million in its first three days, according to Variety. The massive box office haul only adds to the impressive set of records that the film has already shattered: the largest February debut of all time (beating Deadpool), the second largest Marvel debut (after The Avengers), and the highest grossing film by a black director.

Major spoilers ahead for Black Panther.

Cultural critics have had a lot to say about how Black Panther’s Erik Killmonger is a sympathetic villain, and how black viewers can identify with his point of view. He’s a casual murderer with a lengthy kill list literally carved into his own body, but Killmonger (Michael B. Jordan) isn’t just fighting for personal reasons. He’s avenging his father and his lost childhood, but he identifies with other black people who’ve grown up in poverty, and he wants to use Wakanda’s advanced technology to liberate people of color who’ve been oppressed by Western imperialism. His goals have real political weight, and they’re more interesting than those of a lot of superhero-movie villains, who are often motivated more by that generic, vague standby sentiment, “I am evil and I want to destroy the world.”

Wakanda, the fictional African nation at the heart of Marvel Studios’ Black Panther, is a dazzling, technological utopia chock-full of science fiction gadgets and gizmos to make gearheads go gaga. What I didn’t expect, though, when settling into the seat of my Brooklyn theater last Saturday, was for the transportation-nerd parts of my brain to be so thoroughly tickled. Black Panther is a transit buff’s dream come true, with an array of cool planes, trains, and cars — and just a dash of reality to ensure these Afrofuturist dreams maintain some believability. (Spoilers ahead.)

Our first glance at the Golden City, Wakanda’s capital, is when King T’Challa’s airship pushes past the holographic camouflage that keeps the nation hidden from prying outsiders. High-rise skyscrapers, dotted with aerial gardens and parks, loom over low-slung commercial corridors where street life bustles. Vibranium-powered streetcars hover through the trendy neighborhood of Steptown, as a magnetic-levitation train is seen in the distance, zipping along an elevated track. Mind you, this isn’t a hyperloop, as it lacks a vacuum-sealed tube through which to travel. But the city’s transit system is faster than most conventional trains, thanks to some very real-world technology.

Bryan Singer’s 2000 X-Men movie marks the beginning of the modern era of superhero blockbusters. But the film doesn’t open with the titular team. The first scene depicts a young Erik Lehnsherr losing his parents at Auschwitz, showing the pain and firsthand experience with the very worst of humanity that led him to become Magneto, the supervillain who has most shaped the X-Men universe. Other villains come and go, but Magneto helped found the X-Men, and as he alternately works alongside or against them, his presence and his decisions are key to defining who they are and what they fight for.

The Marvel Cinematic Universe has had some worthy villains, like Loki (played by Tom Hiddleston) and Vulture (Michael Keaton), but until now, it hasn’t had one that could compete with Magneto’s ability to instill fear and sympathy at the same time. It’s no coincidence that Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther also opens with a defining childhood moment for its villain, young Erik Stevens. When his father tells him the story of Wakanda, it sounds like a fairy tale to a boy growing up in Oakland. Erik has been denied the life of Wakandan safety and luxury that should rightly be his. He’s condemned to live without his father in a world of violence, drugs, and racial oppression. He comes to advocate for Wakanda to become a colonial power the way Magneto often pushes for genocide against non-mutants. Both men have learned from the examples of their oppressors, and seek to replicate them in ways that would put their own people on top.

Fans of genre film have probably seen Joel Harlow’s work, even if they didn’t realize it at the time. The longtime makeup designer and MorphologyFX founder got his start on horror films in the 1980s, including two of the Toxic Avenger films, and went on to multiple Oscar nominations (for The Lone Ranger and Star Trek Beyond) and one win (for 2009’s Star Trek). He’s worked with Johnny Depp on films from the Pirates of the Caribbean series to Alice In Wonderland to Tusk, and on superhero movies from 2000’s X-Men to Green Lantern to Logan. His work includes designing prosthetics and props — as he explained to The Verge in a 2017 interview about his extensive work on Logan, Morphology FX is an all-in-one effects shop that operates onsite at movie shoots.

That certainly helped with his recent job on the Marvel Cinematic Universe movie Black Panther, where he needed to be on the set to monitor the extensive makeup work involved in creating the fictional African land of Wakanda. Tattoos, ritual makeup, and body modification are common in Wakanda, and director Ryan Coogler wanted these looks to be inspired by specific African tribes. I recently talked to Harlow about how he managed the movie’s biggest challenges, including the multi-hour process of getting those full-body scars on Michael B. Jordan’s character before a shoot, and the multi-hour process of getting them off again afterward.

Black Panther earned $241.96 million in North America over its four-day opening weekend, making it the second-highest grossing opening of all time, Disney confirmed to Deadline. The Marvel tentpole defied earlier estimates and beat out Star Wars: The Last Jedi, which earned $241.6 million in its debut last year. After yesterday, the film trails only The Force Awakens’ massive $288 million four-day total.

This is just the latest of several records broken by Black Panther. The movie, directed by Ryan Coogler, is also the biggest February debut of all time, the second-highest grossing Marvel movie behind The Avengers, and the highest-grossing film by a black director in history.

In terms of critical response and opening weekend box office, Marvel’s Black Panther has been an unmitigated, record-breaking success. Anticipation has been high from the beginning, with the film outstripping all other Marvel movies in first-day ticket sales volume, and becoming the most-discussed movie on Twitter. 

But all the positive coverage and fan enthusiasm clearly angered a small minority of trolls, who organized to sabotage the movie’s ratings on sites like Rotten Tomatoes and the IMDb. And over the weekend, Twitter saw a wave of posts from users claiming they were white filmgoers who were physically assaulted by black attendees at Black Panther screenings. Most of the scam posts claimed the attackers shouted some variant on “this film isn’t for you,” playing on viewers’ racial anxieties about the movie’s intended audience. In some cases, the tweets seemed to be a ploy for attention. One of the first users to go viral immediately began soliciting money via Patreon, though the Twitter account that posted the assault claim has since been suspended. In others, the intent seemed to be to stir up racial tensions or stoke social media users’ fears enough to keep them from seeing the movie.

Over the weekend, the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s latest installment, Black Panther, opened to record box office. It’s something new for Marvel: a movie with a largely black cast, helmed by a black director, and set in a fictional African country, where the vivid art, costume, and makeup designs were all inspired by real-world African tribal traditions. Critical and fan response has been almost universally positive and enthusiastic.

The film is part of a necessary retrenching for Marvel movies. The all-hero battles of Captain America: Civil War, and the galactic adventures of Guardians of the Galaxy 2 and Thor: Ragnorak, are leading up to the Infinity War saga, but for Marvel to keep putting out two or three superhero movies a year, some of them have to drop down to a smaller scale. Like Spider-Man: Homecoming, Black Panther limits the focus to a hero fighting his own local, personal battles: in this case, King T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman), aka the Black Panther, facing a threat to his rule and to his technologically hyper-advanced kingdom of Wakanda. We sat down to discuss the film’s story focus, its look, its frustrating flaws, and its heady successes. Warning: spoilers ahead.

Throughout the history of its cinematic universe, Marvel Studios has excelled at creating engaging, entertaining diversions, bringing dozens of characters to life in a string of blockbusters that feed into one another, like a cinematic perpetual-motion machine. What it hasn’t done is make movies that feel consequential. Sure, there was some commentary about war profiteering early on in the Iron Man films, and Captain America: The Winter Soldier glanced upon the idea of selling out privacy and freedom in the name of security. But more often than not, the studio’s films are primarily concerned with keeping all the narrative plates spinning on the long march toward the Thanos showdown that will finally start in Avengers: Infinity War.

Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther is different. Not only is it a long-overdue embrace of diversity and representation, it’s a film that actually has something to say — and it’s able to do so without stepping away from the superhero dynamics that make the larger franchise work. It’s gripping, funny, and full of spectacle, but it also feels like a turning point, one where the studio has finally recognized that its movies can be about more than just selling the next installment. In the process, the studio has ended up with one of the most enthralling entries in its entire universe.

Every week, a slew of new music videos hits the web. Watching them at your desk is not time theft because you deserve it; think of it as a nice reward for surviving another work week. But what if you don’t have time to watch every video — maybe you have a deadline, a hungry pet, or other grown-up concerns. In consideration of your schedule, Lizzie and Kaitlyn bring you a series called One Video. Each week we’ll tell you “one video” you need to watch, why, and for how long.

Kaitlyn: It’s rare in this life to have a co-worker and friend who is so invested in your work and personal life that they will, when approached with a simple question, spin around in their desk chair and growl, “I already listened to your entire conversation, and now I feel used.”

Good news for you! The Top Dawg Entertainment and Kendrick Lamar-produced soundtrack for Black Panther was released this morning. Lamar has writing credits on all 14 tracks, and he performs on five of them.

The soundtrack features many of his usual friends and collaborators, including SZA, The Weeknd, ScHoolboy Q, 2 Chainz, Ab-Soul, Future, and Zacari, the singer-songwriter who came more or less out of nowhere to help write and perform Lamar’s 2017 hit “LOVE.” Also, Khalid and Rae Sremmurd’s Swae Lee are working together? Weird combination, but it works! Obviously the Vince Staples song is the best one.

Facebook has reportedly removed a group that claimed to have sabotaged the score of The Last Jedi on Rotten Tomatoes, and also planned to review-bomb Disney’s upcoming film Black Panther, according to Marvel Studio News.

With Black Panther coming to theaters this month, a member of the group “Down With Disney’s Treatment of Franchises and its Fanboys” created an event to leave low ratings and negative reviews for the film as well as Solo: A Star Wars Story. The group also indicated they would set up additional events for Avengers: Infinity War and the company’s Marvel Netflix shows. Following reports of the plan, Rotten Tomatoes issued a comment saying it welcomes passionate fans who want to debate a film’s merits, but it doesn’t condone hate speech. It also indicated that its employees were preparing to monitor and address spam reviews. Here’s the full statement:

Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther is already set to have a huge debut at the box office in February. Fandango reports that the first 24 hours of ticket presales for the film were the largest it’s ever seen for a Marvel movie. The record was previously held by Captain America: Civil War, which was released in 2016.

In a press release, Fandango also reported results from a user survey, saying Black Panther was 2018’s second most-anticipated movie (behind Avengers: Infinity War) and that star Chadwick Boseman was the most-anticipated standalone comic book movie hero.

A new teaser trailer for Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther aired on ESPN last night, introducing Andy Serkis as the film’s primary antagonist. As Ulysses Klaue, an arms dealer working in South Africa, he has a personal and vague vendetta against Wakandan king T’Challa and the rest of the nation of Wakanda.

In the trailer’s opening shot, Martin Freeman — reprising his role as CIA agent Everett Ross from Captain America: Civil War — asks him, “You’re telling me that the king of a third world country runs around in a bulletproof catsuit?” Yep! From there it’s all preparation for conflict, with Chadwick Boseman’s Black Panther and Michael B. Jordan’s Killmonger suiting up and lookin’ cool.

Kendrick Lamar produced and curated the soundtrack for Ryan Coogler’s upcoming Black Panther film, with help from Top Dawg label head Anthony Tiffith. The first single, “All the Stars,” is a collaboration between Lamar and his labelmate SZA.

Lamar provided a statement via press release this morning, saying “Marvel Studios’ Black Panther is amazing, from its cast to its director. The magnitude of this film showcases a great marriage of art and culture. I’m truly honored to contribute my knowledge of producing sound and writing music alongside Ryan and Marvel’s vision.”

The first full trailer for Marvel’s Black Panther is here, and it gives us a better look at the world of Wakanda, where T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman) is the newly crowned king. In the trailer, we see Erik Killmonger (Michael B. Jordan), as he attempts to dethrone the Black Panther, plus lots of slow-motion, aerial views, and tight spandex. Nakia (Lupita Nyong’o) reminds the Black Panther, “You get to decide what kind of king you are going to be.”

Directed by Ryan Coogler, Black Panther is a highly anticipated addition to Marvel’s cinematic slate, and it’s the first Marvel film to feature a predominately black cast.

The first teaser trailer for Black Panther is finally here, and it looks incredible. If there was ever any doubt about how Black Panther, one of Marvel’s more enigmatic and under-appreciated superheroes, would fare on the big screen, this two-minute spot should put those fears to rest. There’s political intrigue, a sci-fi utopia, and plenty of action to look forward to, with a largely black cast put right on center stage.

But more than being just generally entertaining, this trailer is dense. Director Ryan Coogler has clearly done his homework on Black Panther lore, pulling in threads and ideas from some of the character’s best stories over his 50 year history. Let’s break some of them down.

The first teaser trailer for Marvel’s Black Panther is finally here, having just aired during game four of the NBA Finals. Here, we see Chadwick Boseman reprise his role as T’Challa, the Black Panther and the newly crowned king of Wakanda. We also get a glimpse of Michael B. Jordan as Erik Killmonger, a Wakandan exile who sets out to dethrone the Black Panther, and the Dora Milaje, an all-female special forces squad and the personal bodyguards of T’Challa. And it wouldn’t be a Marvel teaser without an absurd slow-motion aerial maneuver.

Black Panther is easily one of the more important and highly anticipated films Marvel has on its slate. Directed by Ryan Coogler (Creed), the film features a predominantly black cast that includes the likes of The Walking Dead’s Danai Gurira and Star Wars: The Force Awakens’s Lupita Nyong’o. Wakanda, a fictional African nation that, in the comics, is the most advanced country on the planet, will figure immensely in the story, which promises to be a mix of superheroic action and political intrigue.

Ahead of Black Panther’s 2018 theatrical release, Marvel turned to Ta-Nehisi Coates to breathe new life into the nation of Wakanda.

“I made most of my career analyzing the forces of racism and white supremacy as an idea in America. But what you begin to realize after you do that long enough — you aren’t talking about anything specific. In other words, you aren’t really talking about whether some people have lighter skin or some people have blonde hair or some people have blue eyes or some people have kinky hair. You’re talking about power.” This is the voice of journalist, cultural critic, and best-selling author Ta-Nehisi Coates. Coates is the writer of Marvel’s latest entry in the Black Panther canon, Black Panther: A Nation Under Our Feet. With the book, he’s been charged with turning one of Marvel’s least understood and appreciated black characters into a marquee superhero.Even if you don’t read comics, you likely know about the character Black Panther, thanks to his on-screen debut in last year’s Captain America: Civil War. As the first black superhero in mainstream comics, he’s an important figure in the history of the medium.In 2014, Marvel announced that it would give Black Panther a standalone film. Starring Chadwick Boseman in the titular role, the film will be the first in the billion-dollar Marvel Cinematic Universe to star a person of color as a headlining superhero.

With the release of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 last weekend, Marvel is now 15 films into its grand Cinematic Universe experiment. The studio is only a third of the way through Phase Three, a planned 10-film cycle scheduled to end with the fourth Avengers movie in 2019. But Marvel’s efforts keep expanding, becoming more ambitious and wide-reaching across different media and genres. Not every studio can turn a movie like Captain America: Civil War into both a superhero free-for-all and a thoughtful examination of ideologies. And now that it’s gifted with directors like Doctor Strange’s Scott Derrickson and Thor: Ragnarok’s Taika Waititi, its newest movies and TV spinoffs can be bigger, odder, and more visually distinct than the franchise experiments studios like Warner Bros. are trotting out.

And there’s every reason in the world to expect things to get bigger across all Marvel’s content platforms. New TV projects are being announced at an alarming clip. Producer Kevin Feige recently hinted that the next step in the MCU will be “very, very different.” Even the plentiful Easter eggs in the new Guardians are proof that the Marvel universe still has so much more to explore.

Marvel’s Cinematic Universe has become a template for the entire entertainment industry, with nearly every studio trying to duplicate Marvel’s ability to weave film after film into one serialized, interconnected, long-form narrative. For most other companies, imitating Marvel has been nearly impossible, in large part due to the development and creative process that Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige architects out of the company’s offices on the Disney lot in Burbank, California.

Having originally sprung to life in a small office in West Los Angeles, Marvel Studios now takes up the entire second floor of the sprawling Frank G. Wells building on Disney’s backlot, plus the screening rooms and post-production facilities sprouting up all around the studio to accommodate Marvel’s massive slate. On April 18th, the studio invited a group of journalists into its headquarters for a look behind the scenes at how Marvel movies are designed and brought to life — and we learned a few secrets about upcoming Marvel projects along the way.