Captain America: Civil War arrives in theaters in just a few short weeks, and along with the release comes the onscreen debuts of both Spider-Man (Tom Holland) and Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman) in the MCU. However, when penning the script, Civil War writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely had to adapt the story that they were creating to match the ability of Marvel Studios to use the characters that were legally available to them. The now-famous deal between Marvel Studios and Sony Pictures had not yet been struck, and while they always had a plan to include Spider-Man in the story, their actual ability to do so was fairly limited. As is turns out, this ended up being incredibly beneficial for Black Panther, who originally had a much smaller role than we thought.
“Originally, T’Challa and T’Chaka were just the representatives of Wakanda, sort of the voice of other countries in the world going, ‘You people are out of control,’ and then to be aggrieved by possible Bucky actions. Frankly, just not have him be Black Panther yet,” Markus explained. “He’s getting his own movie, you know. He’s the prince of a country! That’s pretty good for a movie. Maybe we get to play with Spider-Man and all that. When things maybe looked like we weren’t going to get Spider-Man, it was like, ‘Let’s put the costume on that guy!’"
Now, as we all know, Sony and Marvel did end up making the deal for sharing Spider-Man in February 2015, which brought the character back to the forefront. However, according to Markus, "...he became so integral to the story as it evolved that once Spider-Man came back, we didn’t take him out. So, it was a problem that created a really nice situation.”
Early reviews of the film have praised the portrayal of both characters in the film. Are you excited for Black Panther and Spidey's MCU debuts? Sound of below!