What do you know about Wakanda? You’re about to learn a lot more. The first trailer for Marvel’s Black Panther, the highly-anticipated movie from Fruitvale Station and Creed director Ryan Coogler starring Chadwick Boseman, dropped during the NBA Finals on Friday. It gave us our first glimpses of the African nation of Wakanda since a post-credits scene in last year’s Captain America: Civil War.
T’Challa, who made his debut in Civil War, is king of the technologically advanced African nation of Wakanda (home to the precious metal vibranium found in Captain America’s shield) but moonlights as the warrior Black Panther. In the trailer Ulysses Klaue / Klaw (Andy Serkis) reveals where the secret country is located.
This invasion into his formerly clandestine nation concerns T’Challa, who watches the interrogation of Ulysses from behind a glass. It’s not long before he bears his costume’s claws. “It’s hard for a good man to be king,” T’Challa is told in a voiceover.
Coogler has recruited an all-star cast for the film, including Creed star Michael B. Jordan as the villain Erik Killmonger and Lupita Nyong’o and Danai Gurira as Nakai and Okoye, two of Black Panther’s fierce all-female guard, the Dora Milaje. Martin Freeman, Angela Bassett, Forest Whitaker and Sterling K. Brown also star.
MORE: From Wonder Woman to Black Panther: At Comic-Con, Superheroes Looked More Like Us
Marvel also released the first poster from the movie, T’Challa sitting on his throne.
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Black Panther was the first black superhero in Marvel Comics’ history, and the film is Marvel Studio’s first with a black superhero as the lead. Black superhero movies have been few and far between: Halle Berry’s Catwoman and Wesley Snipe’s Blade are among the few non-white superheroes to headline their own films.
In the comics, Black Panther has a Ph.D. in physics from Oxford, has battled the Ku Klux Klan and dated X-Men character Storm. Recently, MacArthur Genius and Between the World and Me author Ta-Nehisi Coates has taken over writing the Black Panther comics at Marvel. In his comics, the character contends with a coup. Coogler has said the plot is in part based on Coates’ stories.
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