T’Challa is coming, and if you happened to watch a video of the Marvel Event, you could feel the crowds excitement in response to the announcement. Comics fans are more than aware of who Black Panther (aka T’Challa) is and many believed leading up to this announcement that it was only a matter of time before Marvel adapted the property into a film. There are still very few details released and seeing as it’s not slated until 2017 I’m sure it’ll be some time before we start to get any concrete information. With that said, there are enough details available to start piecing together a look into the future at what will be Marvel Studio’s 17th film, Black Panther.
What do we know?
Anything we know with absolute certainty we learned last Wednesday at the Marvel Event. This includes the date, who is playing Black Panther and the movie where we’ll first see him in full costume. Black Panther is slated to be released November 3rd, 2017, almost a year to the date after they introduce Doctor Strange. Marvel has had success in the past releasing films in November. Thor – The Dark World premiered November 8th, 2012 and did $644 Million worldwide. Black Panther should have the same shot at success in that slot.
The biggest news outside of the actual announcement, was that Chadwick Boseman would be playing T’Challa. He has long been the front-runner according to various news sources the last year and was always at the top of most fan lists, overall the reception has been quite well for the casting. Boseman has the acting chops, physique and charisma to really excel in this role.
If all that news wasn’t enough to wet your whistle, Kevin Feige also announced that Black Panther would in fact appear in Captain America – Civil War. Here is the exact quote regarding his involvement
He is definitively a big part of ‘Civil War, we will see him for the first time in ‘Civil War’ in costume
The “in costume” part is a bit of a strange way to word it, could we see him in a movie before Civil War?
What is rumored?
As I mentioned above, Feige’s quotes are slightly cryptic and could mean nothing or could mean that we could see T’Challa without his costume in Age of Ultron. We know that parts of Age of Ultron was shot in Johannesburg, South Africa and that Ultron has historically, in the comics, required Vibranium to reach his “final form”. Vibranium is the metal that Captain America’s shield is made out of and can only be found in Wakanda, which is in Africa and happens to be the home of the Black Panther. Additionally, the image above from the Age of Ultron trailer clearly shows a metallic/robot hand dripping in molten metal. I think it’s safe to assume that this is Ultron forging a new Vibranium body. This would require Ultron to goto Wakanda to accomplish this and I think now that we know that a Black Panther film is coming, the odds are a bit higher that we could get an appearance from T’Challa. 
The picture above shows a shot of Andy Serkis from the Age of Ultron trailer next to a picture of Ulysses Klaw from the comics. The similarity is pretty striking. Assuming he is playing that character, this just helps the theory that T’Challa will show up in Age of Ultron seeing as Klaw is a long time enemy of both Black Panther and Wakanda. 
While this is a bit more of a reach than the other rumors, it is worth noting. In the image above you can see Writer/Director/Producer Reggie Hudlin along with Halle Berry (Storm), Djimon Hounsou(Korath), and Anthony Russo (one of the Winter Soldier directors). Them hanging out at some comedy show is not really worth reporting, but what is of importance is the book in Anthony Russo’s hand. It’s a copy of Captain America/Black Panther – Flags of our Fathers, which just happened to have been written by Reggie Hudlin. Yes, Reggie Hudlin, the Hollywood Director/Producer has also had a successful career as a comic book writer. You know who also had a good run as a comic book writer? Joss Whedon. On top of that, Reggie is supposedly good friends with Kevin Feige, and while this is all speculation, you would assume he’d be first choice to direct the very first Black Panther movie.
Where does this all lead?
So what the hell is going to happen in the movie? It’s hard to say. There is a lot of source material to work from and T’Challa has changed a lot through the years with different writers. If Wakanda is in fact involved in Age of Ultron, and Ultron goes there to retrieve Vibranium, I can see Wakanda being forced onto the world stage following the destruction he would bring. With Civil War looming, and Wakanda now part of the larger picture, T’Challa would be forced to head to New York to chat with the world powers and more importantly, The Avengers (or whats left of them). We should be able to get enough information about Wakanda/Black Panther through Age of Ultron and Civil War to allow the solo film to skip over any unnecesary origin stories, particularly because we will have already seen him in full costume. Seeing as the Civil War storyline is primarily New York based, I would guess that the Black Panther movie will take place almost exclusively in Wakanda since we will most likely only have had a brief introduction to it in Age of Ultron. Furthermore, I suspect that Klaw will be the main villain in the movie and he’ll merely be introduced as a antagonist briefly in Age of Ultron, possibly killing T’Chaka (the current Black Panther and T’Challa’s father) and having a brief skirmish with T’Challa in which he’d lose his hand. The casting of Andy Serkis, a motion-cap genius, leads me to believe that we’ll be seeing a very different looking Klaw in the solo movie.
We’d love to hear your thoughts below on what you think will happen in the Black Panther movie. 
