We’re still trying to wrap our heads around David Jonsson (“The Long Walk,” “Alien: Romulus”) playing an older version of Prince T’Challa II in Ryan Coogler‘s “Black Panther 3,” it’s an excellent casting choice after the internet had been calling for Damson Idris (“F1”) to take the part, but as how Kevin Feige tells it during the press rounds at San Diego Comic-Con, Coolger landed on the British actor out of the blue during the Oscars campaign for “Sinners” before they had even started their casting searches.
“I’ll give you the real scoop,” Feige shared with Empire Magazine, about how the key casting came together. “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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Another project Feige announced at the Hall H presentation was “Ghost Rider,” which reunites Ryan Gosling (who had been campaigning for years to play the role) and director Shawn Levy (coming off the billion-dollar success of “Deadpool & Wolverine“) after the two recently worked on “Star Wars: Starfighter,” coming to theaters next year. More quotes from Empire: the executive talked up their studio strategy, saying they are trying their best to focus on quality.
“A lot of it is a strategy we’ve talked about for a while, of focusing on quality,” Feige said. “We always try to focus on quality, but when quantity is so much, you get spread thin. We didn’t want to be spread thin, and ‘The Avengers’ is as important as it comes. And ‘Secret Wars,’ in particular for Empire readers, who know the comics, is a setup in and of itself to the future, to what’s next. So really, it was landing those two movies and setting up 2028, of which we’ve revealed two of them so far, ‘Ghost Rider’ and ‘Panther III’…It was Gosling who had the vision. It was Gosling who had the pitch that won over Shawn, that had them come and pitch us this idea, which led to us on stage today.”
“Is this really happening?” asked Gosling when he came out on stage to reveal his casting. “As you know, this is a character I’ve wanted to play for a very long time. If we’re really going to do this, there’s only one director who can do it.” It was one of the more electric casting announcements alongside Jonsson, although there have been some sighs over the hiring of Levy; we’ll see if that ends up just intentional shock (given that fans aren’t exactly excited by the possibility that “Ghost Rider” ends up a super-safe studio action comedy).
“Black Panther 3” will also see Letitia Wright and Winston Duke back alongside the newcomer to the MCU, as the trio looks to lead the next installment, heading to theaters on December 15, 2028. Wright adds her own spin to EW on the sequel’s dynamic: “[Shuri] now has that mantle to pass on, and that guidance and the wisdom. I’m going to have a really, really good time, a lot of fun, and I’m going to pick on him so much.”
Christopher Marc is lead writer at The Playlist and the primary engine behind our daily news coverage. Chris is based in Canada and tracks everything from Marvel and Star Wars developments to arthouse acquisitions and festival buzz with equal enthusiasm and an instinct for the story readers actually want to read.
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