Oh thank goodness. I just recently read an article about Reginald Hudlin about the Black Panther animated feature he made recently, and I was terrified that an announcement he'd been hired for the big screen live-action flick would soon follow. Thankfully that won't happen, because Marvel has hired Mark Bailey to pen the adventures of the Wakandan king and badass superhero.
This news comes courtesy of THR, who also note that Bailey doesn't have any experience with screenwriting fictional works, as he's been mostly handling documentary features. So this seems like a choice completely out of left field.
For those who don't know much about the Black Panther, he's generally considered to be the first African-American mainstream superhero. He debuted in the pages of the Fantastic Four and has been a member of that team as well as The Avengers.(he was spying on them! How cool is that?) The man under the mask is T'challa, king of the African nation of Wakanda and chief of the Panther Tribe. Wakanda is the only place on earth to contain vibranium, a rare metal which absorbs vibration and kinetic impact. The metal was used in part to create Captain America's famous shield.
Why all the Hudlin hate? The guy has helmed two of my favorite movies of all-time: House Party and The Great White Hype, but Hudlin also wrote the Black Panther comic book for about four years....and he was terrible. Spent the entire time undoing all the things that made the Black Panther cool.
The Black Panther has had a long trek to the big screen. Back in the 90s, Wesley Snipes had come awfully close to developing and starring in the film, but Marvel's financial difficulties shuttered that idea. Just a few years ago, John Singleton(Higher Learning) was attached to direct, but that too fell through. With Marvel's emphasis on developing some of their lower tier superhero characters(Ant-Man, Doctor Strange, etc.), it was only a matter of time before the Black Panther's name popped back up again. In fact, it was made abundantly clear just how much Marvel is interested in the film when Wakanda popped up on a digital map in Iron Man 2.
Now the only question is who will play him? I've still got my money set on Djimon Hounsou.
