Black Panther made its African debut in Lagos, Nigeria this past Sunday.This the first time that a Marvel movie held a premiere locally with many cast members, talent, filmmakers, and press present for the red carpet, the wakanda cast who were present for the Lagos event included director Ryan Coogler, Lupita Nyong’o, Danai Gurira, Martin Freeman, Tenoch Huerta Mejia, Winston Duke, Angela Bassett, Letitia Wright, Dominique Thorne, Dorothy Steel, Isaach de Bankole, and Michaela Coel.
While speaking to the media, Coogler said that Lagos had a lot of cultural significance for filmmakers, which played a big role in choosing Lagos for the movie premiere.
During the event, Coogler also talked about his ancestry and shared more insight into his ancestry.
‘If you know, like African American history, it’s tough for us to trace our genetic lineage due to some purposeful things that happened to us during the transatlantic slave trade,” Coogler said. “So one of the things I spoke with the late Chadwick Boseman about when we first met and were getting ready to put his movie on was that he put me up on something called africanancestry.com, another company I like. It was specific about finding out where you have a heritage to know. So Chad had done his own, and he explained how it is done. So when I did mine, it came back as having lineage to a part of Cameroon, but mainly Yoruba lineage. It was something that I held on to and always wanted to know, to travel to Nigeria for that reason.”
According to Vogue, Danai Gurira, who played Okoye in the movie, said she was “elated” to bring Wakanda Forever “to the motherland.” Her makeup artist Tym Buacharern drew inspiration from Afropunk aesthetics when creating her beauty look for the premiere, which paid homage to Nigeria.
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever will be officially released in cinemas on November 11th, 2022.
