Christopher Judge, the voice of Kratos in 2018’s God of War, will voice Black Panther in Marvel’s Avengers‘ upcoming War for Wakanda expansion. The voice actor initially turned down the role due to the fear of being compared to the late Chadwick Boseman, who played the titular Marvel character in the movies.
“To be quite honest,” the Stargate actor stated, “I was fearful of being compared to what Chadwick had so wonderfully done.” However, Judge ended up accepting the role after encouragement from his family.
There’s many Black Panthers, but I really didn’t believe that anyone should ever do T’Challa again [after Boseman]. The actual talks proceeded and, basically, I wound up doing it because my mother and my children said if I didn’t do it, they would disown me.
On the topic of taking up such an important role, Judge stated that he had decided to “not even attempt a voice match” with the late Boseman, who sadly passed away in 2020 after a four-year battle with colon cancer. Instead, Judge decided to “let [his] performance stand on its own.” Several other members of development also added to this sentiment, with writer Evan Narcisse stating that the upcoming DLC’s interpretation of the superhero will be “its own iteration of the Black Panther mythos.”
DLC Narrative Lead Hannah Macleod clarifies that the game’s version of Black Panther differs from the Boseman’s, in that T’Challa is “older and a little bit more wizened,” and has been King of Wakanda for “a while.” The narrative, Macleod says, will focus less on how the character grows into the role of Black Panther, and instead, focus on conflicts between his sister and family on how Wakanda should be governed.
Additionally, Marvel’s Avengers War for Wakanda will reportedly add enough content to bring the total playtime for all of the game’s story to 25 hours (to clarify, that is not 25 hours for War for Wakanda itself, but the total runtime of Marvel’s Avengers’ complete story, including the base game). A live stream will take place today at 10 am PT featuring Judge as well as Narcisse and Macleod, with Crystal Dynamics hosting the stream on Twitch.
[Source: EW]
