Ava DuVernay Reveals Reasons For Turning Down Black Panther
Ava DuVernay, director of the critically acclaimed Selma, was in talks with Kevin Feige to direct Marvel’s upcoming Black Panther movie, but ultimately decided that it wasn’t the right move for her. Many were surprised by the decision, since the chance to take on Marvel’s first solo black superhero project seemed a natural fit for someone so passionate about civil rights. In her own words:
“For me, it was a process of trying to figure out, are these people I want to go to bed with? Because it’s really a marriage, and for this, it would be three years. It’d be three years of not doing other things that are important to me. So it was a question of, is this important enough for me to do?
At one point, the answer was yes, because I thought there was value in putting that kind of imagery into the culture in a worldwide, huge way, in a certain way: excitement, action, fun, all those things, and yet still be focused on a black man as a hero — that would be pretty revolutionary. These Marvel films go everywhere from Shanghai to Uganda, and nothing that I probably will make will reach that many people, so I found value in that. That’s how the conversations continued because that’s what I was interested in. But everyone’s interested in different things.
“What my name is on means something to me — these are my children. This is my art. This is what will live on after I’m gone. So it’s important to me that that be true to who I was in this moment. And if there’s too much compromise, it really wasn’t going to be an Ava DuVernay film.”
It sounds as if it was tough for her to come to the decision, but that in the end she left it alone to pursue her own personal work and perhaps in-part because she felt Marvel Studios would affect her ability to tell the story as she wanted to tell it. While we feel this is a hit to Black Panther, there is still plenty of room for Marvel to make a great movie with the right director.
Maybe Wesley Snipes will return to it with the passion he had for the project in the 90s?
Who do you think would be the right choice to take the reigns on T’Challa’s story? Let us know in the comments!
