NEWS: Marvel Announces Black Panther and Captain Marvel Movies

Chadwick Boseman announced to play Black Panther.

Man alive has this been a rollercoaster. I posted last week about how Marvel and DC are in some kind of diversity arms race right now, and it feels like they're trying to prove me right. Yesterday it came out that Dr. Stephen Strange would be played by Benedict Cumberbatch (who's a perfectly good actor, but not what we were hoping for), and it seemed like our dreams of a Marvel Cinematic Universe that's not just white guys were dribbling away.

But then! Today we got the announcement that Marvel has fully planned their "Phase 3" film projects, and they include not only Captain America: Civil War and Dr. Strange, but also Black Panther in 2017 and Captain Marvel (the Carol Danvers version) in 2018. Followed by Inhumans and a two part Avengers movie that deals with all of the infinity gems, it looks like.

So I'm having a pretty good day.

Granted, I'm still bummed that we won't get to see Oded Fehr take on Stephen Strange, and I really really desperately want a Black Widow movie to happen someday please. But the announcement of two new movies headlined by a man of color and a woman is a big step in the right direction. 

Also, we have been informed that the Black Panther movie already has its lead, with Chadwick Boseman coming in as African king T'Challa. He'll be appearing in Captain America: Civil War as well, so there's a strong possibility that the story there will actually stay pretty close to the comics. As in, T'Challa will hopefully be the one to fix Steve's broken shield, not Tony. Yay! Because in the comics T'Challa is a verifiable technology genius, and frequently outperforms Tony Stark. It'll be nice to have some great representation like that on the big screen.

This casting and the movie schedule does seem to confirm my suspicion that Chris Evans will be stepping out after Captain America: Civil War, though. I don't blame him - he's been very open about how much stress the Marvel movies cause him and how he really wants to go back to doing more indie work and try his hand at directing. More power to him for choosing where to go in his career. But if Evans is stepping out (and that would be the logical time to do it), then that suggests Steve Rogers will, in fact, be dying in Civil War. 

So who's going to pick up the shield for Avengers 3? Bucky Barnes or Sam Wilson?

Just generally speaking, all of this is good news. Marvel hasn't announced a writer, director, or actor for Captain Marvel yet, but they did suggest that the news would be forthcoming. Personally I'm holding out for Kathryn Bigelow to direct if they're going to be setting it in Carol Danvers' more military background. If they're going to go with the stories of Carol in space, though, a la her current run and crossover with Guardians of the Galaxy just in time to bring everyone together in Avengers 3, then I have no idea who should direct. I'm just plain excited.

As for the casting, I'm willing to bet that Marvel will be picking a more unknown actor. But then, who knows. Katee Sackhoff is still the fan favorite, but there are other women who would be equally interesting in the role. Anna Torv has been mentioned a few times, and I personally would be really interested to see what Teresa Palmer does with the role. Or someone else. I'm mostly just glad they're doing it.

That's your update for today. The diversity arms race rages on. Stay tuned to see how DC fires back.

If Teresa Palmer plays Carol Danvers, then does that mean we can get her husband, Mark Webber (Scott Pilgrim) to direct?