BET Networks and Marvel Animation will treat San Diego Comic-Con attendees to a special sneak peek at their upcoming animated superhero series, The Black Panther. BET’s panel will take place on Saturday, July 26 at the Los Angeles Convention Center.
The Black Panther will be adapted directly from the first six issues of the Marvel Comics series Who is The Black Panther, written by BET entertainment president Reginald Hudlin. Casting is underway and the show is slated to premiere in the first quarter of 2009.
‘As a lifelong comic book reader, I didn’t think anything could top the excitement of writing one of my favorite characters, the Black Panther,’ Hudlin comments. ‘I’m so proud I’ve been able to maintain a successful run of the series over the past three years while keeping my ‘day job’ of programming a network. But now to have both of my worlds collide, to have a faithful adaptation of my own work as a primetime series on the network’it’s a dream come true.’
Created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, The Black Panther is a wise and just African warrior king who struggles to balance progress with tradition as he conceals his identity and employs technology to combat the forces of evil from his base in the fictional kingdom of Wakanda. The character first appeared in a 1966 issue of Fantastic Four and eventually joined other famous Marvel characters in the superhero conglomerate known as the Avengers. Most recently, the character was seen in animated form as a central character is Marvel’s direct-to-DVD feature film Ultimate Avengers 2: Rise of the Black Panther.
The animated Black Panther series is exec produced by Hudlin and Denys Cowan, senior VP of animation for BET Networks. Eric Rollman, president of Marvel Animation, and Cort Lane, director of animation development, are overseeing the series for Marvel.
