Here's the biggest understatement you'll hear today: Back in the late 80s and early
90s, Marvel's attempts at big screen glory just... didn't work out.
Back then Marvel didn't make movies in house and so in 1986 they partnered with George
Lucas and Universal to bring us an insane adaptation of Howard the Duck, complete with
duck on girl action.
Then in 1989 Marvel released a Punisher movie starring Dolph Lundgren and there's also
this bizzare Fantastic Four movie that was never released.
That's a whole other story.
It was in this era that Wesley Snipes was approached to play Black Panther and he was
really into it.
So, how close did we come to seeing a Black Panther movie starring Wesley Snipes?
And where does the name Black Panther come from anyway?
Let's find out!
[intro bumper]
Just a quick PSA before we get started.
Black Panther is for everyone.
Full Stop.
This morning I received this message from my my friend Gary.
I was already wondering how I was going to get this point across, I think this will do
nicely.
So here's a handy test to determine if this movie is for you.
Do you think you're a nerd?
You like comics?
You like comic book movies?
You like movies in general?
Do you have a ticket?
Do you have a pulse?
Now forget all the questions.
Black Panther is for you because it's for everyone.
Moving on.
T'Challa, the Black Panther, is a member of Marvel's Illuminati, an Avenger, king of
the African Nation of Wakanda and the owner of the world's largest stockpile of vibranium.
This guy has a rich history both in Marvel's continuity and in the real world.
He was created by comic book legends Stan Lee and Jack Kirby and first appeared in Fantastic
Four #52 in July of 1966, about a decade into the Silver Age of Comics.
According to Marvel Comics: The Untold Story by Sean Howe, The Black Panther got his name
when Stan Lee heard about the African American political organization, but, it wasn't the
one you're probably thinking about.
You see, in 1965 there was a short lived political party in Alabama founded by five citizens.
It called itself the LCFO or Lowndes County Freedom Organization and its goal was to turn
the tide of the next local election against the Democratic Party of Alabama, which was
way into white supremacy at the time.
Long story cut short, after first using a dove as their symbol, they eventually settled
on a Black Panther (the mascot of Clark College, now known as Clark Atlanta University) and
that's how they became known as The Black Panther Party.
The other Black Panther Party was founded in 1966 by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale and
took its name from the original but it was the LCFO that first inspired Stan Lee to bring
back a character that he and Jack Kirby had put on the shelf named "The Coal Tiger".
This character was reworked into the original Black Panther.
If you want to know more then my friend Scott Niswander did a break down of this topic over
at NerdSync.
However, we need to move along and answer our questions about Wesley Snipes.
So what does any of this have to do with Black Panther on the big screen?
Technically very little, but I see it as much needed context.
Black Panther's creation and real world origin explain why someone like Wesley Snipes
would work so hard for so long to see this character make a big screen debut.
Black Panther was nothing short of revolutionary, he was the first African superhero in mainstream
comics and for someone like Snipes, born in 1960s America, the character was (and still
is) an enduring symbol of how far this country has come, sadly, it can also be a reminder
of how far we have to go.
However, there's a much more important reason that I've brought all this up, but to get
there, we have to go BACK to the future.
Fast forward to the mid to late 1990s, Wesley Snipes was a super star.
Even still, getting a Black Panther movie made was an uphill battle that he would eventually
lose.
There were multiple rewrites and director changes.
That combined with the woefully inadequate and unsatisfactory CG of the time and the
project was doomed.
In order to bring the nation of Wakanda to life, in the way they wanted, they would have
had to actually build portions of it and that was just out of the question.
Wasn't even considered.
At the time Matte paintings were frequently used for backgrounds, establishing shots and
even to transform buildings but things added in this way could not be interacted with by
the cast and could sometimes be hit and miss.
Wesley Snipes standing on a giant Panther statue… just wasn't going to happen.
Even 1995's Toy Story, while advanced for it's time, actually choose toys as the focus
of the movie because of the plastic-like appearance of the CG available at the time.
Still, with a small personal story, the movie could have been done, just in a more limited
form.
Snipes felt strongly that Africa was too often shown as a stereotypical bleak and barren
land and the idea of a vast technologically advanced civilization was a very forward thinking
idea.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter back in January, Sipes had this to say about
the ill fated project: "I think Black Panther spoke to me because he was noble, and he was
the antithesis of the stereotypes presented and portrayed about Africans, African history
and the great kingdoms of Africa, It was something that the black community and the white community
hadn't seen before."
Unfortunately, marvel was not the power house then that it is today.
Back then, it was DC Comics that had enjoyed success in the theater and Marvel was nearly
bankrupt.
In fact, in 1996 they actually declared bankruptcy.
Money was not the only problem though.
When pitching the idea, many people would automatically assume that the movie was associated
with Huey Newton and Bobby Seale's Black Panther Party.
Of course we know it's not.
But since both debuted in the same year with the same name, and with the party being well
known and the character, not so much, one can see why it was such an uphill battle to
bring the project to life.
To quote Snipes form the same interview again: "They think you want to come out with a
black beret and clothing and then there's a movie".
The movie went through multiple scripts and directors after Columbia was chosen as the
studio for the project.
However, the movie never made its way out of development hell.
Snipes, however, was not deterred.
He took what he had learned from this experience and moved forward with another Marvel property,
Blade.
Just one more quote and I'll link this interview in the description below: "It was a natural
progression and a readjustment, They both had nobility.
They both were fighters.
So I thought, hey, we can't do the King of Wakanda and the Vibranium and the hidden
kingdom in Africa, let's do a black vampire!"
And that's the story of Marvel's Black Panther, two revolutionary political parties,
Wesley Snipes and the movie Blade.
I hope you guys enjoyed it.
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Until next time guys, be kind to each other.
I'm Jay Parks.
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