American Chadwick Boseman, the main actor in the superhero film Black Panther which had been a huge global success in 2018, has died of colon cancer, his family announced Friday. "Playing King T'Challa in Black Panther had been the great honor of his career," said a statement posted on Boseman's social media accounts. "He died at home, surrounded by his wife and his family", adds the text. Chadwick Boseman, 43, had played the first black superhero with a Marvel movie all to himself.
Directed by Ryan Coogler, "Black Panther" had gathered, in addition to Boseman, a cast of black actors among the most popular in Hollywood (the Oscar winner Lupita Nyong'o, Angela Bassett, Forest Whitaker, Daniel Kaluuya) and benefited from a huge production and promotion budget. Adapted from the adventures of the first black superhero created by the Marvel Comics studio in 1966, the film tells the fight led by King T'Challa to defend his nation of Wakanda, the most advanced in the Marvel universe.
Nominated for an Oscar for Best Picture - a first for a comic book adaptation - and critically acclaimed, "Black Panther" generated more than $ 1 billion in box office revenue. Prior to this role, the most important of his career, Chadwick Boseman played baseball legend Jackie Robinson in Brian Helgeland's "42" and singer James Brown in Tate Taylor's "Get on Up". Most recently, he appeared in Spike Lee's Da 5 Bloods . He was also due to reprise the role of T'Challa in a second Black Panther installment scheduled for 2022.
The actor had not made public his illness, diagnosed in 2016, and had continued to film. "He was a real fighter," his family paid tribute to him in a statement, explaining that he had continued to work while undergoing "countless surgeries and chemotherapy". The Democratic candidate for the US presidential election Joe Biden immediately saluted the memory of the actor. “The real power of @chadwickboseman was greater than anything we saw on screen,” he tweeted. "From Black Panther to Jackie Robinson, he has inspired generations and shown them that you can be anything you want - even superheroes," Mr. Biden tweeted.