Marvel is ‘absolutely’ making a sequel to Black Panther

Black Panther has been a massive success at the box office, even by the high standards of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The film has brought in more than $930 million worldwide to date, and is still in the theaters.

It’s unsurprising that Marvel is enthusiastic about working on the sequel.

[Warning: The following contains minor spoilers for Avengers: Infinity War.]

“Nothing specific to reveal, other than to say we absolutely will do that,” Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige told Entertainment Weekly. “One of the favorite pastimes at Marvel Studios is sitting around on a Part One and talking and dreaming about what we would do in a Part Two. There have been plenty of those conversations as we were putting together the first Black Panther. We have ideas and a pretty solid direction on where we want to head with the second one.”

Feige has the manner of someone who just placed a rather large bet and won; Black Panther had a larger budget than comparable Marvel films and Wakanda itself will be one of the major locations of the upcoming Infinity War. What might have been a costly stumble if audiences didn’t connect with Black Panther has become a major win due to the strength of the movie, and that momentum is likely to spill over into Infinity War. Even smaller characters from Black Panther who were a hit with fans will be returning in the next Marvel film.

“That’s the grand Marvel Studios/MCU tradition of just being all in, right?” Feige explained. “All in on stuff we believe in, before the audience tells us what they think. You’ve heard us talk ad nauseam about the fact that we were in production on Avengers before either Thor or Captain America was released. Same thing with the whole third act of Infinity War being in Wakanda.”

Wakanda will also fulfill Marvel’s need for beautiful and somewhat fantastical locations now that Asgard was destroyed. “Anchor point is a good way of [describing] it, particularly as some of our other anchor points, Asgard for instance, are gone,” Feige said.

This huge push for Black Panther happened before the ticket sales were known, and now Marvel looks even smarter as these characters and locations become more important in the Cinematic Universe.