Denzel Washington is joining the MCU. The veteran Hollywood star said Black Panther 3 is one of his upcoming projects, with director Ryan Coogler currently writing his role for the sequel to Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. “At this point in my career, I’m only interested in working with the best,” he said in a recent interview as part of his Gladiator 2 press tour.
Despite his prolific career, the Academy Award-winner has never appeared in a comic book movie before. “I played Othello at 22, I’m now going to play it at 70,” Washington recently told the Today show on Australia Channel 9 (via Hollywood Reporter). “After that, I’m playing Hannibal. After that, I’ve been talking with Steve McQueen about a film. After that, Ryan Coogler is writing a part for me in the next Black Panther.”
That’s a lot of “after thats” and Black Panther 3 doesn’t currently have a release window as part of the next phase in Marvel’s cinematic roadmap. The 2022 movie functioned both as an Avengers: Endgame pick-me-up and a tribute to the late Chadwick Boseman who passed away in 2020 after playing the titular superhero in the first movie.
Meanwhile, the animated spin-off Eyes of Wakanda is set to come to Disney Plus in August 2025. And Letitia Wright, who played Black Panther’s sister Shuri, told The View over the summer that there’s “a lot coming up” and that she’s looking forward to returning to that role in the future.
Before he passed away at the age of 43, Bosman was one of many actors to pay tribute to Washington at the American Film Institute in 2019. “There is no Black Panther without Denzel Washington,” he said at the time, praising the work he’d done for decades that helped provide a blueprint for a new generation of Black actors to star in the 2018 Marvel movie and carry it to a $1.3 billion box office.
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