You know what? I'm black(ish) and I do see it as more than a little difficult to make a realistic/believable Wakanda, though revealing it would be easy (the country was kept secret for some time as I understand) as they could write the big reveal into an iron man film. Casting wise it wouldn't be particularly difficult either, anyone who gave it more than five minutes thought could sought that out.

However as sad as it is the big social issues that are being brought up do exist regardless how much we wish they didn't. Blade wasn't a Black vampire hunter with a capital B, he was a badass that happened to be black (to me anyway). An African superhero would be a little harder to relate to, the audience does need to relate to the protaginst and project themselves into him after all and some geezer with a nigerian accent is going to a harder to do that with. As far as the excec comment goes I cant of the top of my head think of main character in a film set in the future that was black apart from I, robot so maybe we cant see ourselves in the future but that's because we haven't been given the chance.

Also lets face it until fairly recently Marvel have made some pretty aweful black characters and Black Panther is one of them and the same goes for The Falcon. They come across as a bit piecemeal up until Bishop.

Hello. About a "GoG" movie, it's easy to see Marvel's point: I don't want to spoil anything, but an "Avengers" sequel will probably have a cosmic feel, and hence the presence of Rocket Racoon and friends (Adam Warlock among them, I hope!).

About black characters,I'm afraid they are not enough popular. Black Panther and Luke Cage are two of my favorite marvel superheroes, but their books are not best sellers. But yes, it would be great to see T'challa with the Avengers. Anyway, don't forget that Nick Fury is a white character in the traditional Marvel universe.

Just wanted to say thank you Todd for bringing this to light. When I heard that quote from marvel I was floored. Especially when I saw their line up, GotG?!?!? Are kidding me! I'm a hardcore comic geek, and hearing him say that "it would be difficult" was nothing less than a slap in the face to wake me up and remind me of where I was.

Everything you're saying is true, the fact that they rebooted the Punisher damn quick, and yet they haven't even thought about a Blade reboot or another sequel, further proves everything you said is correct. The first Blade movie made more money than both Punisher movies combined, yet there it sits, along with Luke Cage (aka Power Man) and Black Panther.

And a Blade tv series is no substitute for a movie. Like most cases and people like this, I'd rather Marvel just come out and say "we're not going to be doing any Black Superheros cause we don't think the majority of movie goers i.e white males 16-34 will pay to see them on screen." I wouldn't like it, but at least it'd be out there for all to see.

Co-sign! Thanks again Todd for igniting this discussion. Something smells fishy in the House of Ideas..I hope a surprise is in the wings..

Superhero movies should certainly have more characters that aren't your typical straight white male. But this shouldn't be done with tokenism, and Black Panther would be difficult to produce without running into that. Audiences deserve characters who are interesting and unique without having to point at their skin-tone; Black Panther would come off as simply 'Bat Man but Black'.

"Batman but Black" that comment sounds like something you probably overheard at a Marvel development meeting. So what was Blade? Van Helsing but Black? And since Blade came out in 1998 would that make Hugh Jackman, Wesley Snipes but White? That right there is the exact kind of thinking that was on display at the SDCC panel and is definitely going on over at marvel weather people want to believe it or not.

I think he meant because of Black Panther's costume with the cape... it is VERY Batman-like. I could be wrong though.

More than that:

* Both characters don't have obvious super powers, but are fit an athletic

* Both characters have a similar costume theme (animalistic, black, even the pointy ears)

* Both characters are rich and powerful (one is a prince, one is a corporate billionaire)

* Both characters have access to lots of high-tech equipment

And naturally Black Panther looks like Batman. Van Hellsing and Blade are pretty sodding different.

The only reason people seem interested in this character is because he is black, which sounds like a terrible reason to make a movie based off of him - not because we shouldn't have black superheroes (we certainly should, and more so than in supporting roles like War Machine, Storm or Nick Fury), but because people have very little to say about him or his history OTHER than he is black. Nobody talks about his personality, or the adventures and stories he has been involved in... just the colour of his skin. It doesn't make him a compelling character on is own.

Now that I'm a lot less rip-shit about this, one thing does occur to me. I'm feeling that the unspoken problem here is that all of Marvel's 'iconic' black characters (Okay, Luke Cage, Black Goliath and BP. Okay Black Goliath isn't exactly iconic) were created by middle aged white guys in the 1970's and, as well intentioned as they were, their given origins are markedly more absurd than their white counterparts - and that's saying something.

The thing is - couldn't Marvel just change the origin for screen? They do it all the time!

An African superhero would be a little harder to relate to, the audience does need to relate to the protaginst and project themselves into him after all and some geezer with a nigerian accent is going to a harder to do that with.

People seemed to have no problem with Jackie Chan in his prime.

Bottom line: Great Script + Great Director + Great Actors + Great FX= BOX OFFICE GOLD. Not to mention Marvel Studios is a pimp name now, well on their way to being the tight jockey equivalent of Pixar.

The BLACK PANTHER character was already a hot button issue back in the day, I can only see this pissing people off anyway if it ever became a movie. I mean, just look where he comes from: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/1/15/JungleAction10.jpg/220px-JungleAction10.jpg

And if Marvel is so racist, wtf was up with the BLADE series?

Marvel didn't make Blade. New Line did. Not a hard bit of research to do. Marvel Studios, as a film entity, didn't even exist when Blade was made.

Ok Ok fine then. Marvel SHOULD just whip a movie out of its ass about a superhero that came out during a time most black superheroes had to have Black in their name who hails from a fictional, super-technologically advanced country in a poor, underdeveloped continent that actually exists. That would push anyone's buttons, ever, right?

I don't know why you had to be so condescending but OK buddy.

wouldn't***

KONY 2012 proved how stupid we are about African political and social issues. Even with all of it's seemingly good intentions, look at the backlash! Am I crazy for thinking that there will be angry bloggers out there ranting about how an African superhero could only get his own movie if the country he/she is from is fictional and represents everything that real life Africa isn't?

Have you ever thought that seeing racism everywhere is actually a good way of keeping racism alive ? Just because Black Panther is stuck in development hell doesn't mean racism is at work.

You seem to picture the Marvel team as a bunch of white guys wearing pointy white hoods and burning crosses in front of Tyler Perry's house... I think they now very well that there is a market for an Black superhero (as Blade and Obama have demonstrated), and their reluctance to greenlight Black Panther must be due to less simplistic and backward reasons than "oh, he's black, so the film won't perform well with the public".

Well, that's a fun way to characterize the article. Too bad it does nothing of the kind. You can debate WHY Marvel thinks setting a film in Wakanda is somehow more difficult that making a movie about a talking raccoon in space without shouting "Racism, racism, racism." I think that's a valuable thing to do and I think that's what's happening here. But to say that the race of the character doesn't play a factor is willful ignorance.

Does that mean that Marvel are actively racist? No, it doesn't. It could very easily mean that they are of the opinion that there aren't sufficient previous examples of this sort of film starring a black man to justify the expense. That's almost certainly part of the issue, as those comparisons play a BIG part of any movie getting greenlit. Problem is the comparisons don't exist for either success or failure, because nobody's made any of these in the first place, other than Blade, which is a very simple fact that exposes a very major flaw inherent in the system. A flaw that will not go away by people pretending it's not there.

It is also very likely that Marvel is seeking out the characters that their development team personally likes the best. Again, nothing particularly wrong with that. But, as someone who has met and awful lot of development people over the years I can tell you with absolute authority that almost all of them are white and male. Am I surprised that they choose to make movies dominated almost exclusively by white male heroes? Not at all, those are the characters the people pulling the switch identify the most with personally. But again, they don't represent the entire market despite the fact that they control a huge percentage of the content. Which feeds directly back into the first problem, i.e. how minority groups get represented in the first place so that you can establish a business case for making more films (or not) catering to minority audiences.

Does the fact that the industry is mostly white and makes decisions catering mostly to people like themselves make the industry and the people within it racist? I don't particularly think it does. But it does make it blind to a HUGE number of people who are different from the decision makers.

As for whether it's 'too simplistic' to think that a movie wouldn't get greenlit because the lead was black ... well, go through the box office releases and see how many films with black leads were given wide releases in the last five years. It's not simplistic at all. It's a basic reality. The numbers don't lie and Hollywood is, in general, not in the business of making movies with black people. As a general rule, if you aint Denzel Washington or Will Smith - or, occasionally, Jamie Foxx - you aint the lead. Ever.

Plus, black people are almost lucky in Hollywood next to Asian people, who lest they're Jackie Chan or Jet Li, can only hope for henchman or sidekick role...

Racial representation on screen is nowhere near proportionate to the US population. America is already at a point where there is literally no majority population in most (if not all) cities, with no single race topping fifty percent of the population. The trend is going that direction for the country as a whole and this is also the case here in Canada. You'd never know it by the way the population is represented on screen, though.

You're right, though, that the situation is significantly worse for Asian and Hispanic actors. The glass ceiling on casting in America is actually the primary driving force behind the quick rise of the Vietnamese film industry. All of these Vietnamese American guys realized that they were never going to get a fair shake so when Vietnam opened up the industry they moved back to a country that most had never been to since early childhood to try there. That's why The Rebel got made and now all of these guys like Johnny Nguyen, Dustin Nguyen etc - talented guys who kicked around the US industry for years without getting a real crack at anything - are now living in Vietnam full time, where they are major stars. It's worked out exactly the way they hoped it would and has been a huge plus to the Vietnamese industry but it's pretty sad that these guys had to leave the country they had lived in almost their entire lives to pursue their chosen profession.

"with no single race topping fifty percent of the population"

So why is the term "minority" still used ? (ok, I admit this is not the place for such a discussion but still, it puzzles me).

But in the light of the fact you state here I totally agree the representation of black people among lead roles is severely unbalanced.

As for Asians, what you say about the Vietnamese industry is pretty interesting, and I also think there is hope for Chinese actors in Hollywood, with the advent of US-China coproduction exemplified by Iron Man 3 or The Great Wall.

The term "minority" is also used to signify groups which hold less power and privilege within a society.

Exactly what OccamsTaser said. You should come here sometime and check it out and, suddenly, it will be very clear.

That's the big question to me (and bear with me because English isn't my first language) : what do you call a minority ? Because if a minority is, like in French, a group of people that is smaller in number, then is it so illogical that it is less represented in starring roles ? Kind of like the proportional principle in a chamber of parliament ? I'm not saying there should be rules, nor am I implying there are enough African American stars as it is.

But either black people aren't a minority, or their lesser representation in starring roles cannot be seen as some kind of injustice, but rather as a reflect of their numerical status.

I think the point raised by Todd Brown is very important, but there is somehow also a logic in the way Marvel acts. We know from the end of the avengers that Thanos will be the next villain. And the guardian of the universe movie is meant to introduce this character, because from what I understood, it's one of their major opponent.

Marvel said they didn't want more than two movies pro year. With all the movies based on Avengers characters, this doesn't leave a lot of place.

I know that with the Ant-Man movie, it will make three movies, but this one has been in developpement hell for so long, and Ant-Man is a natural part of the Avengers, so it seems logic that the movie is made after all.

But clearly, a black panther movie would be cool, even if I believe he married Ororo during Civil War, and this could be the kind of difficulties raised by the fact that the Fox has the rights for X-Men.

Todd thanks for this article. This is the first time I've heard about this. I guess since all the talk now is about the Falcon being in the next Cap adventure, it's unfornunate that for now Black Panther will probably be swept under the rug! I'm very disappointed in Marvel, it seems they're on their high horse right now, and they've totally forgot that like you mentioned in 1998, Blade was the blockbuster that really started this whole comic book movie craze, I mean it really kicked butt literally and set the tone for other's to come! And the character was black! Hello Marvel?They have so many non white heroes in their database that would make for some good if not great movies, but they'd rather put dumb intergalactic aliens on screen that even the average comic book geek doesn't even know about! Just about anyone who's opened up a Marvel comic book has seen the Black Panther's picture in it somewhere! He's well known! Since when did an audience relate to aliens from another world instead of humans with special powers?I hope GOTG bombs big time! it's time for Marvel to wake up and get off it's high horse and remember if it wasn't for one particular black character's sucess, they're would be no X-Men, Avengers, Spidey,etc...

Guardians of the Galaxy is great fodder for the screen. It should be pretty easy to pull off. It's anything but a 'tent-pole' property. Black Panther has far more name recognition than that.

A few days ago on Bleeding Cool, this popped up during the Dark Horse Comics panel at SDCC

"But one quote stuck out about Tony Puryear and Erika Alexander talking about pitching a science fiction film which had a number of black people. They were told by a studio executive that he could save them all time, by changing the race of the black characters. Because, as Tony quoted him, “black people don’t like science fiction – they don’t see themselves in the future.”"

I'll leave it at that.

I'm glad you posted this but the sad part is that lots of people will continue going through life ignoring the facts that racism runs ramped in this lovely country of ours. Just because we have laws against it doesn't mean people have changed because of said laws. Their just afraid of being labeled as such so they go the PC route and keep quiet . But every so often we will read and hear stuff like this-

"One quote stuck out about Tony Puryear and Erika Alexander talking about pitching a science fiction film which had a number of black people. They were told by a studio executive that he could save them all time, by changing the race of the black characters. Because, as Tony quoted him, “black people don’t like science fiction – they don’t see themselves in the future.”"

... unless, of course, what you're saying is that white audiences are so overwhelmingly racist that they won't come out to see a movie about a black man and that black audience's money doesn't count.

I bet part of it is they don't feel that a black superhero can carry a movie on his own. At this point Marvel is seeing $$ and is starting to take larger risks in its choices of films- see Guardians of The Galaxy- and I am sure their risk management people don't feel that for the amount of money they would spend on a Black Panther would get them into the black so to speak for its payout.



I know they could do this, they don't even have to follow the comics and they would just need to cast a up and coming young black man in the role. The comic continuity is all over the place anyhow and it isn't a household name BUT they could make it one if done right. Honestly they don't need to drop more then $10-20million on it and go the low-fi route with it and it COULD become a household name if they do it right.

I just don't see them "wasting time" on something like that when they can go ahead and make these "tent pole" films now in their back catalogue.I just hope Marvel doesn't burn up their goodwill earned from so far a stellar film line-up.

I think you're exactly right about the thought process. I also think that that thinking is incredibly short sighted and not particularly accurate. When a rom-com like Think Like A Man can gross over 90 mil in the US with minimal advertising, that tells you there's a market there for black themed films. Tyler Perry's movies typically gross over 50 mil in the US alone. And these are movies that completely ignore the white audience. There's a sizable market out there even if you assume there is no chance of cross over to a multiracial audience. And if you do ... Blade grossed 128 mil in 1998 dollars.

Do you scale down the budget a bit while you suss out what the market will bear? Sure. Of course you do. I would hope they're doing exactly that with ANT MAN, too. But there's obviously a market.

NOTE: I've got nothing against Marvel making a Guardians Of The Galaxy movie. More power to 'em. But calling THIS difficult in the context of THAT is absolutely ludicrous.

Because mutants have been so unsuccessful on screen so far. And people are so prone to confuse movie politics with real world ones. And Tony Stark's alcoholism has proven such a turn off to audiences. Etc, etc, etc.

Saying that making a movie with a talking tree as a super hero is easier and has more universal appeal than this is RIDICULOUS. I refuse to believe that people identify more with a talking tree and a gun wielding raccoon than they do with an actual human.

1. What's your favorite Black Panther story-arc, Todd?

2. Giant talking trees worked fine in "Lord of the Rings."

3. On the flip side, I think a big part of the failure of "Green Lantern" was that most kids are only familiar with John Stewart thanks to "Justice League" and "JLU."

The only way in which any alien or non-human character is universally relatable is that they exist outside of race, can be dubbed in any language, and can be embraced for different reasons by different people. Examples include but aren't limited to: Kermit the Frog, C-3PO, Nemo or any given Disney or Dreamworks animal character from the past century.

I've never suggested Guardians can't work but if you're going to look at me with a straight face and saying sentient trees are easier to pull off and more relatable to a wide audience than a human being, you are absolutely, 100%, out of your mind.

No, it's about the fact that Fox owns the film rights to anything mutant related in the Marvel universe, not just the X-Men. Marvel can't even utter the word "mutant" in their movie. That's why it is a problem. You're creating an argument when there isn't one in this case.

If that's the case - and I VERY, VERY strongly doubt that it is, given that the character is NOT a mutant in the vast majority of the story arcs - then Marvel's response to the question would have been "Fox owns the rights." Instead they say the issue is creating Wakanda. Because, you know, that's so much more outlandish than Asgard.

"Guardians of the Galaxy," if done right, can be a fun, inter-steller space romp that would have obvious universal appeal. Also, it's perfect for an international market since pretty much every character except Starlord is an alien.

"Black Panther" takes place in a fictional, highly Orientalized African country created by white people whose primary villains have names like Erik Killmonger and Venomm. Also, he's the "RULER OF WAKANDA" and the fact of the matter is a number of real-life rulers of African countries in the past century have been pretty horrible.

Oh and the Ultimate version of the character is a Mutant and a subject of the Weapon X program, which also makes the character "problematic."

Kevo42 as a point, they can say difficult because of the time table for the movie, that said.

I can not help thinking that most of the roles of black people are only secondary roles. And this is very sad, that in this point in human history racism is still here.

I feel this is short hand for " There just doesn't seem to be a market for a black superhero".

There was a market for Blade. I feel this is short hand for "All of our development people are white and we've forgotten that not everybody else is."

It's worth noting here that Marvel is clearly okay with black support characters in their productions - they're adding The Falcon to the Captain America sequel - but describing something like Black Panther as being overly difficult IN THE SAME PRESS CONFERENCE where they're announcing Guardians of the Galaxy is pretty jaw dropping.