Denzel Washington has confirmed he will star in Black Panther 3 before his retirement.
The 69-year-old actor is the first to talk about the existence of a third film in the blockbuster Marvel franchise — which will follow the 2018 original and 2022 sequel Black Panther: Wakanda Forever — and has also revealed the film will be among a handful of roles he will take on before he bows out of acting after a career spanning four decades.
Confirming director Ryan Coogler has written a role just for the Oscar-winner for the third instalment, Denzel told Australia’s Today show: “At this point in my career, I’m only interested in working with the best, I don’t know how many more films I will make, probably not that many. I want to do things that I haven’t done.”
Sharing the roles he has lined up before he bids farewell to his Hollywood career, he said: “I played Othello at 22, I’m now going to play it at 70. After that, I’m playing Hannibal. After that, I’ve been talking with Steve McQueen about a film. After that, Ryan Coogler is writing a part for me in the next Black Panther.
“After that, I’m gonna do the film Othello. After that I’m gonna do King Lear. After that, I’m gonna retire.”
The late Chadwick Boseman — who played the titular character in Black Panther before his death in 2020 — once declared: “There is no Black Panther without Denzel Washington.”
So, Coogler is fulfilling a wish of the movie’s star by casting Denzel — who once paid for Chadwick’s acting classes — in the movie.
Presenting him with the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2019, the actor — who passed away at the age of 43 following a secret battle with cancer — continued: “My whole cast stands on your shoulders.
“The daily battles won, the thousand territories gained, the many sacrifices you made for the culture on film sets through your career, the things you refused to compromise along the way lay the blueprints for us to follow.”
In August, Denzel declared that there are “very few films left for me to make”.
He insisted that after Sir Ridley Scott’s Gladiator II, there’s not much else that has piqued his interest.
He told Empire magazine: “There are very few films left for me to make that I’m interested in, and I have to be inspired by the filmmaker, and I was tremendously inspired by Ridley.”
At the American Black Film Festival in June, he explained: “The things that are going on for me professionally behind the camera are as important to me now as in front of the camera. I think there’s less and less time I’ll be spending in front of the camera.”
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