It’s been over two months since Chadwick Boseman passed away, and the world is still reeling from his sudden absence. In fact, Marvel hasn’t even started to think about what they’ll do with his Marvel character, Black Panther. But they do know one thing they won’t do.
In an interview with Clarin (dug up by IGN), executive producer Victoria Alonso was asked about a rumor that Marvel would use a digital double of the actor, which was used, somewhat infamously, to bring back late Star Wars baddie Peter Cushing in 2016’s Rogue One. Alonso, who’s been with the MCU since Phase One, had a sharp response to that idea.
“No,” she replied. “There’s only one Chadwick, and he’s not with us. Our king, unfortunately, has died in real life, not just in fiction, and we are taking a little time to see how we return to history and what we do to honor this chapter of what has happened to us that was so unexpected, so painful, so terrible, really.”
Alonso added that Boseman “was not only a wonder of being human every day that we spend together the five years that we spend together, but it also seems to me that as a character what he did elevated us as a company, and has left his moment in history.”
Because of that there’s no rush to find a new T’Challa. “I know that sometimes two months go by or three months go by in production and one says, already, it was a long time,” Alonso said. “But it is not a long time, we have to think carefully about what we are going to do, and how, and think about how we are going to honor the franchise.”