According to a recent leak, Marvel and Disney are looking to recast T’Challa for an upcoming Black Panther-related project… which is sort of confusing a lot of people, considering what it’s implying.
Alright, this one might be tricky to explain, so bear with me for a second.
Jeff Sneider, a well-known leaker of all things cinema, recently stated that Marvel “plans to recast the role of T’Challa five years after Chadwick Boseman’s death” in the MCU.
Now apparently, there’s been a little bit of miscommunication here - and it’s easy to see why.
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The internet at large has taken this to mean that Chadwick Boseman’s role as T'Challa/Black Panther will be recast… but it actually seems like Sneider’s “leak” may have been intentionally vague on purpose, because that’s likely not the T’Challa that Marvel is referring to.
“For those wondering, Sneider went further into detail about it: Marvel and Coogler have been wanting to recast T'Challa for quite some time, but none of the actors they've offered the role to wanted it due to fan expectations and being afraid of tainting Boseman's legacy,” user mr_peebs stated in a thread on the r/MarvelStudios_Rumours subreddit.
“From the sounds of it, however, it seems like Sneider is talking about T'Challa Jr being aged up and he'll be the "new" T'Challa going forwards, not a multiversal variant recast.”
As you might remember, Prince T'Challa II (also known as Toussaint) was introduced at the end of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.
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Toussaint is the T’Challa the leak is likely referring to, not Chadwick Boseman’s T’Challa. T’Challa II’s actor will likely be replaced, and subsequently aged up, with someone with a bit of star power for the next Black Panther film.
I mean, we don’t know for sure, but given that they went through the trouble of introducing and setting up T’Challa II… I think it would be a bit weird for them to just suddenly bin that all off and recast Boseman’s role, especially when the internet still can’t even agree on whether or not they want that to even happen.
We will have to wait to hear a bit more out of the recently leaked Black Panther 3 before any of this can be confirmed though, but my money is on Toussaint taking over the role in the future.