At a presentation held in
New York City in April 2008, BET announced that it had signed a deal with Marvel Comics to turn
Black Panther into a primetime half-hour animated series. In July 2008 at
San Diego Comic-Con, the first footage of the series was shown publicly, indicating that the series was essentially just
motion comic versions of the mini-series released by Marvel Comics. The show was supervised by
Reginald Hudlin (President of Entertainment at BET), Eric S. Rollman (President of Marvel Animation) and
John Romita, Jr., writer and artist, respectively, of the
story arc of the Black Panther comic entitled "Who is the Black Panther?", on which the first six episodes were based. Only subtle deviations from the comic exist, such as replacing
Rhino with
Juggernaut.
Djimon Hounsou was cast to voice T'Challa/Black Panther. The series was directed by
Mark Brooks and
Jon Schnepp. Jon Schnepp co-directed and edited episodes 4 & 5 of the 6 episode animated motion comic series. The theme song was composed by
Stephen James Taylor in a dialect meant to be
Wakandan (the fictional character's native language). In reality, the song employed a Bantu-based language of Taylor's creation. == Release ==