Black Panther fans are calling on Marvel to honor the late Chadwick Boseman by continuing his role as King T’Challa in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.
As of late Thursday afternoon, nearly 50,000 people have signed a Change.org petition calling for role to be recast.
“If Marvel Studios removes T’Challa, it would be at the expense of the audiences (especially Black boys and men) who saw themselves in him. That also includes the millions of fans who were inspired by the character as well,” reads the petition. “By not recasting, it could stifle the opportunity for one of the most popular leading Black superheroes to add on to their legacy.”
Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige previously announced that the MCU will “honor the legacy” of Boseman by not recasting T’Challa. Boseman passed away of colon cancer in August 2020.
In other news, Michael B. Jordan has avoided nude scenes in the past, but he briefly bares his behind in his new film, A Journal for Jordan.
“You wanna save those moments of being vulnerable for the right project. To make sure it’s sophisticated, it’s elevated to the right level, when you’re gonna reveal yourself like that. And yeah, this was the one for me,” the NAACP Image Award winner tells Entertainment Weekly.
Finally, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II stars in The Matrix Resurrections as Morpheus, a character previously portrayed by Laurence Fishburne in The Matrix, The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions. As some fans complained about Fishburne’s absence, Mateen says his goal was to honor Fishburne’s performance.
Abdul-Mateen II tells EW.com that he embraced the “opportunity to learn more about the world and also to pay homage to the performance that Laurence Fishburne presented to us and then to really add onto that in my own way.”
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