Chadwick Boseman and Black Panther will forever be tied together, given his iconic portrayal of the Wakanda king in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Crystal Dynamics was well aware of that creating the War for Wakanda DLC for Marvel’s Avengers, as Hannah MacLeod, the game’s writer, revealed in a recent interview with ComingSoon.
Crystal Dynamics originally meant to show a glimpse of its version of Black Panther in September 2020 for the launch week episode of its War Table series, which features sneak peeks at the live-service game. However, this was just four days after Boseman’s untimely passing. Out of respect, the studio altered what it was going to show. According to MacLeod, this was just an announcement.
“We pushed the announcement of Black Panther back,” she said. “That was really the only thing that was affected. We were still in development on Black Panther at that point and continued to be until now.”
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While the team always wanted to do Black Panther right, this all put pressure on them to more properly pay their respects to the character.
“I think Chadwick Boseman’s passing certainly had an effect on us in terms of knowing that we really needed to do justice to this character even more so,” MacLeod said. “Even just from his performance of T’Challa, he’s become this pop culture icon. He’s become Black Panther in a lot of people’s eyes. Our goal from the get-go before his untimely passing was to extend that legacy. The biggest influence that Chadwick had was just to reaffirm our desire to get this right.”
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This pressure wasn’t exclusive to the team, either. Chris Judge, who portrayed Kratos in the 2018 God of War game and is playing T’Challa in the War for Wakanda expansion, told Entertainment Weekly in July about his hesitance to take on the role. MacLeod spoke about that and said she was happy that he decided to don the claws and suit.
“It also heavily influenced our actors,” revealed MacLeod. “Chris Judge has spoken to that before. He was a little nervous to take the role at first because of Chadwick’s performance being so iconic. We’re really glad he took the job. He’s amazing.”