David Jonsson is the new Black Panther and Marvel boss Kevin Feige says the actor had been cast and kept secret for six months before the reveal. Jonsson was introduced on stage by Marvel boss Kevin Feige and Black Panther 3 director Ryan Coogler at Saturdays Marvel presentation at SDCC. Black Panther 3 had been rumored to be mentions by Marvel but there had been no rumors around Jonsson being revealed.
In fact, the rumoured front runner for this role was F1 star Damson Idris. However, in a recent interview with Empire, Feige says that actually Jonsson has had the role for the last six months.
“I’ll give you the real scoop,” he said. “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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It makes a lot of sense now why Jonsson pulled out of the Alien: Romulus sequel that’s currently in development. The film may have helped propel his star forward, but he now has to take the big opportunities, like this that come his way.
And what a bigger role than the new Black Panther, who is the son of T’Challa, thereby not diminishing the late Chadwick Boseman’s legacy?
Black Panther 3 will be with us on December 15, 2028. Preceded by Ghost Rider in the July slot, and rumor is it’s be X-Men that begin 2028 in the May slot Marvel has booked. All we know for now is that Coogler really wants Denzel Washington in the film, to the point we expected him to show up on stage this Saturday.
What do you think of David Jonsson as the new Black Panther? Leave any thoughts about Feige’s comments below as always.
