Marvel’s Black Panther is definitely the superhero of the moment, with the new film expected to top $100M opening weekend.
Director Ryan Coogler recently revealed that another comic character almost made his big screen debut in the new film, telling CinemaBlend that he and writer Joe Robert Cole considered introducing Elijah Bradley, aka Patriot, to the world of Wakanda.
“Crazy enough, for comic book fans, we toyed with the character Patriot for a little bit,” Coogler shared. “Early on we were interested to get our hands on him, Joe [Robert Cole] and I, but that ended up going away so we could focus on Wakanda a little more.”
The writer-director team ultimately decided against the move, saying they wanted to dedicate more time to the characters central to Black Panther’s story.
“The ones that you see were kind of always there. M’Baku, Killmonger, T’Challa, Nakia, Okoye, Shuri, Ramonda, Klaue, Everett Ross … they were always in every draft. So we had to make sure that they all had arcs, and it had something to do with that.”
