Getty/John Shearer
- Marvel's "Black Panther" is a box-office hit, breaking records and exceeding expectations.
- But Wesley Snipes almost played the character in a movie adaptation in 1992.
- Snipes told Variety that the project never became reality because "there were no templates for it" at the time.
Wesley Snipes became a superhero of sorts in the Blade trilogy of films, but before that, he was circling a "Black Panther" movie.
This weekend Marvel's "Black Panther" movie, starring Chadwick Boseman as the title character, broke box-office records on its way to one of the best openings of all time. It's now the highest grossing February release of all time, and the third best opening weekend ever (if you count the four-day holiday).
But back in 1992, Snipes was on track to star as Black Panther, according to an interview with Variety.
"I had a good agent at the time who was sensitive to some of the artistic concerns that I had," Snipes told Variety. "We thought it would be very cool and atypical for a Marvel comic-book character. Something that would be appeal to white people, black people, Asian people, and have some martial arts in it and expose the world of Africa in a way that most people were unfamiliar with and very contrary to the stereotypes that are projected about the continent."
Snipes said he studied the African diaspora, which attracted him to Wakanda, the fictional African nation that Black Panther is king of.
"When I read 'Black Panther' [comic books] and they had Wakanda on there, it immediately triggered those memories of studying the ancient empires lost in history," Snipes said. "The coolest part of it is Wakanda was such a technologically advanced country that blended technology and ancient times quite effectively."
Snipes said three different scripts were written but none came to fruition. At the time, he said, "there were no templates for it," and he was "quite busy."
Six years later, though, in 1998, Snipes got the chance to play another Marvel character: Blade, the half-man, half-vampire mercenary.