Most of us are aware of the
Black Panther Animated series developed for BET. Well, nest week the six episode series will finally be released on DVD.
MTV Splash was lucky enough to obtain some exclusive footage from the upcoming DVD featuring Djimon Hounsou as T'Challa.
Former BET President of Entertainment Reginald Hudlin took some time to speak with MTV about the series and subsequent DVD.
What follows are just a few of the excerpts from their conversation...
Black Panther isn't necessarily a top-tier character, but you managed to recruit some top-tier talents for the series' cast and creative team. Djimon Hounsou, Kerry Washington... Was it a hard sell? What was your pitch like?
The great thing about Black Panther is that it seemed to sell itself. When I reached out to Djimon and all of these other people, I presumed nothing. I presumed I would have to explain to them who Black Panther is, but he knew exactly who he was and had been tracking the project and said yes right away.
What was behind the decision to animate it with a motion-comic style rather than traditional animation?
It kind of goes back to the origin of the whole show. At the time, I was President of Entertainment at BET, and I was sitting around talking with my Head of Animation, Denys Cowan, and he goes, "You know what would be a cool show? Black Panther."
I thought that was a cool idea, but it was just a lunchroom conversation. Then a couple of months later, he came back with this three-minute animated sample and said, "This is what the show's going to look like." He just went ahead and did it.'
What was the sample? Was it something that appeared in the series?
It was basically what you see in the first couple minutes of the show — the flashback when the invading tribe is moving through the Veld and they get attacked by the Panther's Teeth. I was just blown away. He found a way to take the amazing art of John Romita Jr. and bring it to life in a way I've never seen before.
And the fact is, there's more animation in "Black Panther" than there ever was in any episode of a Hanna-Barbera show. The phrase "motion comic" is kind of a misnomer. It's limited animation, but so is anime. It's all about what you do in it. I felt like this was a breakthrough style in maintaining the original art and at the same time having more energy and more motion than anything I'd seen before done in Flash. And it allowed us to contain the costs, so we could do it all in the U.S.
Hawksblueyes: Click on the link below to read the reast of the interview at MTV.