Selma's Ava DuVernay tipped to direct Marvel's Black Panther

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/may/13/ava-duvernay-marvel-direct-black-panther-selma

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Ava DuVernay, the director of acclaimed civil-rights drama Selma, is being courted by Marvel to take charge of a high-profile superhero movie. The Wrap reports DuVernay is being lined up for either Black Panther, the company’s first attempt at a film headlined by an African American comic-book titan, or Captain Marvel, expected to be the studio’s first female-fronted superhero epic.

Black Panther, which will debut in July 2018, is the most likely project, according to the respected Hollywood trade site’s sources. The print version, the first black superhero in mainstream comics, is the superpowered ruler of the fictional African nation of Wakanda. He is considered a genius – one of the eight cleverest people on Earth – and has access to vast financial resources, thanks to his nation’s huge reserves of the fictional substance Vibranium.

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Chadwick Boseman will play a younger Black Panther who takes on the mantle following the death of his father in the forthcoming big-screen version. DuVernay would become Marvel’s first African American director, and first female director, though the company had initially hired Monster’s Patty Jenkins to direct Thor: The Dark World before later dispensing with her services.

The film-maker’s absence from the list of 2015 Oscar nominees for best director was one of the biggest controversies of the awards season. Selma did pick up a best picture nomination, and was rewarded with the best song prize, but critics lamented the Martin Luther King biopic’s absence from a number of other high-profile categories.

Captain Marvel, the other option for DuVernay, is one of the studio’s best-known female superheroes. A sometime US air force pilot named Carol Danvers who develops cosmic superpowers including flight, super-strength and “energy projection” after gaining extraterrestrial DNA during an accident on a restricted military base, the character was named Ms Marvel in 1977 before gaining her current moniker some 35 years later.

She was chosen by Marvel as a surprise choice for its first female-centred superhero movie, despite Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow being better known to cinema audiences through her appearances in the Iron Man, Captain America and Avengers films. Angelina Jolie has also been under consideration to direct the film, which will debut in 2018, according to reports.

The two films are part of Marvel’s ambitious slate of nine superhero movies set to debut between 2016 and 2019, which will also include Captain America: Civil War, Benedict Cumberbatch’s debut as sorcerer supreme Doctor Strange, a second Guardians of the Galaxy film and two new Avengers movies, Infinity War parts one and two.