Fans go wild for ‘Black Panther’ – ‘Wonder Woman’ star expanding superhero franchise

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SAN DIEGO, July 23, (Agencies): “Black Panther” stole the show Saturday night at Marvel Studios’ Comic-Con presentation, outshining the Ant-Man, Thor and even the ultimate Avengers team-up, “Infinity War.”

Fans went wild for the exclusive sneak peek at the upcoming superhero pic, featuring star Chadwick Boseman T’Challa intercepting a sketchy vibranium trade between Andy Serkis’ Klaw and Martin Freeman’s Everett. Set in an elegant, Japanese-inspired casino, the deal goes haywire and T’Challa and his security detail (Lupita Nyong’o and Danai Gurira) jump to action in their evening gowns to retrieve the precious goods.

The clip was followed by the trailer for the film from “Creed” director Ryan Coogler and the 6,500 souls in the audience erupted into deafening cheers at the sight of T’Challa morphing into the Black Panther suit.

The film finds T’Challa returning to his home of Wakanda after the death of his father, the king.

Coogler, Boseman, Nyong’o, Gurira, Serkis and more of the cast were on hand in San Diego to talk about the film, out Feb 16, 2019.

Nyong’o described her character as a spy who goes undercover to report back to Wakanda about what is going on in the rest of the world.

“Wakanda is an isolated nation,” Nyongo said. “The world does not need to know what’s going on in Wakanda.”

Coogler said he’d always had a fondness for comic books, and found “Black Panther” at a pivotal moment.

“I grew up as black kid in the Bay Area and grew up with comic books and it didn’t matter what color the superheroes were. I read X-Men, I read Spider-Man,” Coogler said. Then he started looking for a character that looked like him and he stumbled on Black Panther.

Marvel Studios also teased its third “Thor” film, “Thor: Ragnarok ,” which has quite a different and more irreverent tone from previous installments, and hits theaters in November.

“I’ve played this character five times,” Chris Hemsworth told the audience. “Me, personally, I got a little bored and thought we’ve got to try something a little different … Push the envelope, take it to another level.”

So, they cut his hair, take his hammer away and pit him against Jeff Goldblum and Cate Blanchett. When Blanchett’s Hela, the … of death, invades Asgard, Thor finds himself on the run and under the control of Goldblum’s Grandmaster on Sakaar where he is pitted against the Hulk in a Gladiator tournament. In this film, the Hulk refuses to turn back into Bruce Banner, but he is learning to speak, albeit slowly.

Unveiled

Marvel also unveiled the “Avengers: Infinity War” footage that the studio had previously shown to audiences at the Disney fan convention, D23, and made a few announcements regarding upcoming films: Michelle Pfeiffer will play Evangeline Lilly’s character’s mom Janet van Dyne in the “Ant-Man” sequel “Ant Man and the Wasp” and “Captain Marvel,” Marvel’s first female-driven superhero movie, will be set in the 1990s.

As Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige described it: It’s so long ago that Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury will have two eyes.

Thor has lost his invincible hammer and Black Panther shoulders the responsibility of being a new king, in exclusive scenes shown from Disney’s Marvel studios’ upcoming superhero movies at San Diego’s Comic-Con.

One of the most high-profile draws of the annual convention for pop and nerd culture fans, Marvel’s star-studded panel session on Saturday kicked off with “Thor: Ragnarok,” due in theaters in November.

Director Taika Waititi joined stars Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Tom Hiddleston and Cate Blanchett to discuss how the Norse god has evolved in the film, specifically as he has lost his power-wielding hammer, is trapped on a planet named Sakaar and has to fight in a gladiator contest with the Hulk.

Comedy weaves through a trailer that shows Thor meeting the Hulk and filling him in on his status, saying “I’m doing my own thing now, I’m not really hanging out with the Avengers anymore, it all got very corporate.”

As supervillain Hela (Blanchett) takes over Thor’s home planet of Asgard, he must recruit the help of the superheroes, including his mischievous brother Loki, to stop Hela and prevent Ragnarok – the end of the world.

Scenes showed T’Challa, joined by his spy Nakia (Lupita Nyong’o) and warrior Okoyo (Danai Gurira), in slick, explosive fight scenes with a villain named Ulysses (Andy Serkis,) as well as T’Challa’s ambitious brother Erik (Michael B. Jordan).

Marvel announced that its upcoming female superhero standalone film “Captain Marvel” starring Brie Larson will take place in the 1990s, before the events of 2008’s “Iron Man” that set Marvel’s subsequent film franchise in motion. The villains will be the alien shapeshifters called the Skrulls.

It also revealed new additions to its 2018 “Ant-Man and the Wasp” film, including Michelle Pfeiffer as Janet Van Dyne and Laurence Fishburne as Dr Bill Foster.

After smashing box office records this year, Wonder Woman received the loudest cheers among the DC superheroes gathered on Saturday at San Diego’s annual Comic-Con to present new footage and trailers for Warner Bros’ expanding comic book film franchise.

A teaser of Warner Bros’ upcoming superhero films shown to the 6,500 attendees at the panel gave a glimpse of “Wonder Woman II,” a presumed sequel to June’s “Wonder Woman” movie that is on track this weekend to become the second-highest grossing movie of 2017.

The latest trailer picks up after the death of Superman from last year’s “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice,” and shows Batman and Wonder Woman joined by the Flash, Cyborg and Aquaman to fight supervillain Steppenwolf.

Wonder Woman says “They said age of heroes would never come again,” as Batman tells her, “it has to.”

“All of these characters are dealing with personal issues and they come together and are able to use those circumstances to save the world, which is beautiful,” Fisher said.

In his excitement after watching the new trailer, the muscle-bound Momoa threw his chair across the stage, breaking it and briefly sitting on the floor.

Momoa also debuted the first look at the standalone “Aquaman” movie, and revealed the aquatic superhero will be battling his brother, the supervillain Ocean Master, in the film due out next year.

The avid fan base at Comic-Con, a gathering of pop and nerd culture fans, were also shown footage of Warner Bros’ upcoming sci-fi films “Ready Player One” and “Blade Runner 2049.”

Veteran filmmaker Steven Spielberg is directing “Ready Player One,” out next year and adapted from the book of the same name, about a near-future dystopian America where people escape real life into a virtual reality world void of limits.

Spielberg said the film is a “flashback to a decade I was very involved in, the 1980s, and flash forward to a future waiting out there for us whether we like it or not.”

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