Walking Dead star Lennie James has called talk of a Black Panther sequel ‘disrespectful ‘to the legacy of Chadwick Boseman.
British actor Lennie James, who plays Morgan in The Walking Dead and spinoff Fear the Walking Dead, has spoken up about the possibility of Disney recasting the character of Black Panther in the Marvel Cinematic Universe following the tragic death of actor Chadwick Boseman earlier this year.
Boseman passed away in August after a four-year-long battle with colon cancer. Amid the palpable grief, there have been some murmurings about happens with the sequel to the tremendously successful Black Panther.
One idea fronted is that Letitia Wright, who plays Black Panther’s sister Shuri in the movie, take over for him, as Shuri does in the comics. There’s also the possibility of recasting Boseman with another actor. Speaking on The Nerds of Color YouTube channel, it sounds like James is wary of the franchise going forward at all.
“I think, after Chadwick, it’s going to be very difficult to do anytime soon, and it would be slightly disrespectful,” James said. “After Blade, Black Panther was the other character where I ran to school screaming, ‘Have you seen who they’ve done? Have you seen who they’ve created?’ and I had a huge affinity for it.”
"I think that, obviously as everybody else does, what [director] Ryan [Coogler] and Chadwick and Danai [Gurira] and everybody involved with it did with Black Panther is monumental. It’s not one that I’d go anywhere near as, like I said, I think Chadwick owns that for the foreseeable future."
James isn’t the only one to weigh in on this issue. Wright herself told NET-A-PORTER that it’s hard to even comprehend a production without him without Boseman. “We’re just still mourning Chad, so it’s not something I even want to think about. The thought of doing it without him is kinda strange. We’re just grieving at the moment, so it’s trying to find the light in the midst of it.”
That seems to be the attitude among the higher-ups, as well. When Clarín asked Marvel Studios Executive Vice President Victoria Alonso about rumors that they might make a digital double of Chadwick Boseman for a sequel movie, she flatly denied it
"No. There’s only one Chadwick, and he’s not with us. Our king, unfortunately, has died in real life, not just in fiction, and we are taking a little time to see how we return to the story and what we do to honor this chapter of what has happened to us that was so unexpected, so painful, so terrible, really…I know that sometimes two months go by or three months go by in production and one says, already, it was a long time. But it is not a long time, we have to think carefully about what we are going to do, and how, and think about how we are going to honor the franchise."
Black Panther II is technically still scheduled to come out in May of 2022, but given what’s happened, it’s unclear whether it will hit that date or get made at all.
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h/t Digital Spy