JANUARY 30, 2018 5:00am PT by Ryan Parker, Aaron Couch
Wesley Snipes Reveals Untold Story Behind His 'Black Panther' Film
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Rommel Demano/Getty Images (Snipes); Courtesy of Marvel Comics (Cover)
The cover of 'Jungle Action featuring the Black Panther' No. 10 (July 1974, Marvel) and Wesley Snipes.
Getting the project off the ground was an uphill battle that included script re-writes, director uncertainty, storytelling clashes and CG technology that was inadequate to create the fictional nation of Wakanda.
In the mid 1990s, while riding a wave of box-office hits that propelled him to superstardom, Wesley Snipes undertook a bold initiative: make a film about the Marvel Comics character Black Panther.
The African superhero is now a household name thanks to the juggernaut Marvel film franchise including him in 2016's Captain America: Civil War. Star Chadwick Boseman's work as T'Challa (Black Panther) quickly became a fan favorite, which helped launch the character's first self-titled feature film, opening Feb. 16.
Hype for the Ryan Coogler-directed movie, also starring Lupita Nyong'o and Michael B. Jordan, is at a boiling point. Pre-ticket sales broke a Fandango record, and the film is projected to open to $100 million-$120 million and could become the biggest launch for a Marvel Cinematic Universe hero's first standalone movie. Not to mention that buzz for the film after Monday night's Hollywood premiere set social media ablaze.
Yet, some 25 years ago, it was a much different story. Snipes' uphill battle was plagued with script re-writes, director uncertainty, storytelling clashes and inadequate CG capabilities needed to truly bring the marvelous fictional African nation of Wakanda to life.
There have always been rumors about the defunct project — which would ultimately lay a road map for 1998's Blade (the first hit film based on a Marvel character) — but the details have remained murky, until now.
For the first time, Snipes pulls back the curtain for The Hollywood Reporter and shares the tale of how his version of the beloved superhero never quite came to fruition despite his efforts and ambitious vision, which very much mirrored what the character has become.
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Courtesy of Marvel Comics
'Jungle Action featuring the Black Panther' No. 21 (May 1976, Marvel).
"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," Snipes tells THR. "It had cultural significance, social significance. It was something that the black community and the white community hadn’t seen before."
Created in 1966 by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, Black Panther was revolutionary as the first African superhero in mainstream comics. The king and kick-butt protector of Wakanda had it all: brawn, brains, wealth and advanced technologies.
Snipes was hooked in an instant when he and his then manager, Doug Robertson, were approached by Marvel for the project. Feeling that Africa, save for the unique animal population, was too commonly shown in film as a depressing, desolate land, Snipes yearned to show its beauty and lush history.
"Many people don’t know that there were fantastic, glorious periods of African empires and African royalty — Mansa Musa [emperor of the West African Mali Empire] and some of the wealthiest men in the world compared to the wealth of today," Snipes explains. "That was always very, very attractive. And I loved the idea of the advanced technology. I thought that was very forward thinking."
At the time, Marvel was hardly the Disney-backed powerhouse that it is today. After years of hemorrhaging money, the company declared bankruptcy in 1996. While competitor DC Comics had enjoyed big-screen success with hits such as Tim Burton's Batman movies and Christopher Reeve's Superman franchise, box-office hits eluded Marvel.
"Our major competitor was owned by Warners, and they were coming out with Superman movies and Batman movies.... We were out there struggling," recalls former Marvel editor in chief Tom DeFalco (1987-94), who suffered through critical and commercial failures like Howard the Duck (1986), Dolph Lundgren's The Punisher (1989) and a 1994 Fantastic Four movie so bad it never even came out.
Snipes, on the other hand, was red hot, having just starred in a string of hits including New Jack City, White Men Can't Jump, Passenger 57, Rising Sun and Demolition Man. More than just his next picture, Snipes says he saw the Marvel superhero project as a cultural movement.
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Steve Granitz/Getty Images
Wesley Snipes at the Planet Hollywood Beverly Hills grand opening in September 1995.
"Black Panther is an iconic character who much of the world was unfamiliar with and the communities that I grew up in would love," Snipes says. "Look, from the days of William Marshall playing Blacula in the 1970s black flicks and the fervor you found inside the black and Hispanic communities, it never crossed my mind that the audience wouldn’t be down with it."
With Stan Lee's blessing ("He was supportive of the Black Panther project at the time."), Snipes was ready.
But right off the bat, there was an issue. The initial struggle, as Snipes explains, was explaining to the uninitiated that he was trying to make a movie about the comic book superhero Black Panther, not the 1960s civil rights revolutionaries. "They think you want to come out with a black beret and clothing and then there’s a movie," he says, sounding exhausted.
With Columbia locked in as the film's studio, it was time to find a screenwriter and director. Neither search would be simple.
"We went through three different scripts and a couple of different director options — very interesting director options at the time," Snipes says, chuckling.
Mario Van Peebles was on the short list, as was John Singleton, who made a big splash in the industry at the age of 23 with his 1991 film Boyz n the Hood. "They were trying to find the young, up-and-coming black directors," Snipes says.
Snipes would never chat with Van Peebles about the project, but he did have an unforgettable meeting with Singleton.
"I laid on him my vision of the film being closer to what you see now: the whole world of Africa being a hidden, highly technically advanced society, cloaked by a force field, Vibranium," Snipes begins. "John was like, 'Nah! Hah! Hah! See, he’s got the spirit of the Black Panther, but he is trying to get his son to join the [civil rights activist] organization. And he and his son have a problem, and they have some strife because he is trying to be politically correct and his son wants to be a knucklehead.' "
Laughing, Snipes continued, "I am loosely paraphrasing our conversation. But ultimately, John wanted to take the character and put him in the civil rights movement. And I’m like, 'Dude! Where’s the toys?! They are highly technically advanced, and it will be fantastic to see Africa in this light opposed to how Africa is typically portrayed.' I wanted to see the glory and the beautiful Africa. The jewel Africa."
Snipes, somewhat intimidated by Singleton's interpretation, says he was unsuccessful in fully laying out his vision. But that wasn't a bad thing.
"Thank God," Snipes proclaims. "I love John, but I am so glad we didn’t go down that road, because that would have been the wrong thing to do with such a rich project."
