Kevin Feige Addresses BLACK PANTHER Director Hunt and Marvel Diversity
Marvel is currently on the hunt for a director to tackle Black Panther. We previously heard that Selma director Ava DuVernay was wanted for the project, and Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige confirmed that they did meet with her in an interview with THR:
“We’ve met with her for sure. We’ve met with a number of people for a number of movies. She has been one of them… We need to find the best director for any given movie, and that’s really where we always start. If diversity is part of that, it’s great. It’s important. You will start to see things across the industry as a whole change as more filmmakers come up through the ranks and become part of making movies like this.”
I thought DuVernay did an amazing job with Selma, and I imagine she would do some great things in the process of bringing Black Panther to life for the big screen. The character will make his first appearance in Captain America: Civil War, and whatever happens in that is sure to set up what happens in his solo film.
As you know, Marvel has been criticized in the past for failing to make a female-centric movie and for firing Patty Jenkins, who was originally supposed to direct Thor: The Dark World. (She is now attached to the Wonder Woman film being developed at Warner Bros.) Now on top of DuVernay possibly directing a Marvel movie, they are also apparently looking to get Angelina Jolie on board for Captain Marvel. Feige went on to address Marvel bringing in women directors in to take on their films:
“I think it will happen sooner rather than later, without giving too much away. You look back sometimes, and it’s just the nature of this industry, or the nature of the culture, but there’s a big shift happening. What’s exciting about Marvel, go back and look at the source material: It’s been diverse in a cutting-edge way going back to the ’60s, and I think we’ve represented that effortlessly and accurately in the movies we’ve made up to this point, but certainly with ‘Black Panther’ and ‘Captain Marvel’ doing it in a much more overt and purposeful way.”
Black Panther is currently being written by Mark Bailey, and will be released on July 6th, 2018. As for Captain Marvel, it is being written by Nicole Perlman and Meg LeFauve and is scheduled to hit theaters on November 2nd, 2018.