LOS ANGELES: "Black Panther" is expected to be a major box office smash, but it has also taken on the mantle of cultural talisman, a touchstone on which moviegoers of color worldwide are pinning their hopes.
The 18th entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, opening Friday in the United States, features an almost entirely black cast led by Chadwick Boseman as the first non-white superhero to get his own standalone movie in the lucrative franchise.
The film from Disney-owned Marvel Studios is expected to break opening weekend box office records and has spawned headlines and social media buzz worldwide about its significance as a game changer for racial representation in cinema.
"We put our heart and soul into it because we knew it was a great opportunity," Boseman, 41, said during a Twitter Q&A on Monday.
"But to see how people have responded to it when they haven't even seen the movie yet, it's unlike anything I've ever seen. It's crazy."
Boseman ("Message from the King," "Marshall") plays the titular superhero in "Black Panther," also known as T'Challa, king and protector of the technologically advanced fictional African nation of Wakanda.
His star-studded support cast is made up of African Americans Michael B Jordan, Danai Gurira, Angela Bassett and Forest Whitaker, English actors Daniel Kaluuya and Letitia Wright -- Kaluuya is of Ugandan heritage while Wright grew up in Guyana -- and Kenyan-Mexican Lupita Nyong'o.
With two Oscar winners (Nyong'o and Whitaker) and two nominees (Kaluuya and Bassett), as well as a hatful of Golden Globes nods, the super-cast features some of the most accomplished black actors working in cinema today.
Wakanda, almost a character in itself, subverts the stereotype of Africa as victim by positing an affluent, resource-rich, never-colonized utopia doing its own soul-searching over taking in refugees from poorer nations.
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