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

Ryan Coogler has signed on to direct Black Panther sequel

2018-10-12T10:04:18-04:00

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.

What the film will look …

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Black Panther will be the first movie to screen in Saudi Arabia’s new public movie theaters

2018-04-05T14:22:17-04:00

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 1 …

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Nnedi Okorafor is writing a comic series about Black Panther’s Dora Milaje warriors

2018-03-17T16:00:01-04:00

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 Ul …

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Black Panther has crossed the $1 billion mark worldwide

2018-03-11T13:25:31-04:00

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 l …

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Chadwick Boseman says T’Challa is the enemy in Black Panther

2018-02-28T17:12:20-05:00

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, …

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Black Panther’s Wakanda is a transportation utopia with a dash of reality

2018-02-23T14:05:20-05:00

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 Ki …

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Black Panther’s Killmonger is the MCU’s Magneto

2018-02-21T14:13:13-05:00

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 v …

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Behind the scenes with Black Panther’s makeup designer

2018-02-21T12:11:17-05:00

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 …

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Black Panther tops The Last Jedi in four-day opening weekend

2018-02-20T13:41:07-05:00

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 …

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Twitter is brutally mocking the fake Black Panther assault stories

2018-02-19T16:45:37-05:00

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 …

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