Black Panther: Wakanda Forever Concept Art Reveals Scrapped Upgrade for Daniel Kaluuya’s Character

Marvel Studios has left Phase Four in 2022 with the last film on their slate, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. Now the studio is looking to the future with Phase 5 and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. Wakanda Forever had a pretty successful launch and will finally be available for streaming in February. Like with all films, when they go to their digital release the people behind the scenes of the film begin to release concept art of things that almost happened but didn’t. Niek Schlosser, a Marvel Studios artist, revealed a concept for Daniel Kaluuya’s return as W’Kabi that didn’t happen due to the actor having a scheduling conflict with Nope. You can check out the concept below!

“Redesign of Wkabi’s costume made for Wakanda Forever,” the artist wrote on Instagram. “Sadly never made it in, but Nope was a great film.”

The studio unveiled their plans for the next three years, with two new Avengers movies being announced. Avengers: The Kang Dynasty and Avengers: Secret Wars will both make their way into theaters in 2025. One thing that wasn’t announced on the slate was a third Black Panther movie. Even though it’s all but guaranteed that fans will receive a third Black Panther movie, Marvel producer Nate Moore revealed during a recent interview that the studio and Ryan Coogler both want to see the fan response to the highly-anticipated sequel before agreeing to do a third film in the franchise. 

“That’s a great question. To be honest, this is not me trying to not answer the question,” Moore said. “We really want to see how audiences receive the film, and I think Ryan’s really interested to see how the film plays before we decide. There are certainly ideas we’ve floated around of what a third film could be if we get to make it. But until the movie comes out, we’re a bit superstitious in that way. We don’t want to count our chickens, because you never know what’s going to happen.”

The most recent Marvel Studios film to hit theaters was Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. In the sequel, Queen Ramonda (Angela Bassett), Shuri (Letitia Wright), M’Baku (Winston Duke), Okoye (Danai Gurira) and the Dora Milaje (including Florence Kasumba), fight to protect their nation from intervening world powers in the wake of King T’Challa’s death. As the Wakandans strive to embrace their next chapter, the heroes must band together with the help of War Dog Nakia (Lupita Nyong’o) and Everett Ross (Martin Freeman) and forge a new path for the kingdom of Wakanda.  

Introducing Tenoch Huerta as Namor, king of a hidden undersea nation, the film also stars Dominque Thorne, Michaela Coel, Mabel Cadena and Alex Livanalli. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is exclusively in theaters now!

What do you think of the concept art? Let us know in the comments below or by hitting up our writer @NateBrail on Twitter!