Chadwick Boseman has ended up with a bigger role in Captain America: Civil War than he first bargained for. And he can thank Sony for that.
As has been reported previously, the inclusion of Spider-Man in the upcoming movie was for a while fairly uncertain due to disputes between Marvel and Sony (who own the film rights to the friendly wall-clambering superhero).
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Civil War's screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely told Screenrant that initially Black Panther's role was going to be pretty minor - in fact, audiences weren't even going to see Boseman in costume at all.
"Originally, T'Challa and T'Chaka were just the representatives of Wakanda, sort of the voice of other countries in the world going, 'You people are out of control', and then to be aggrieved by possible Bucky actions," they said.
But…
"When things maybe looked like we weren't going to get Spider-Man, it was like, 'Let's put the costume on that guy!'
"And then he became so integral to the story as it evolved that once Spider-Man came back, we didn't take him out. So, it was a problem that created a really nice situation."
Black Panther is getting his own origin movie in 2018, directed by Creed's Ryan Coogler. It will focus on how T'Challa, Prince of fictional African nation Wakanda, comes to be the all-powerful Black Panther when his father, T'Chaka the King, is treacherously killed.
See Boseman's Black Panther debut in Captain America: Civil War, in cinemas April 29.
