As we've seen in the trailer for AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR, Black Panther's (Chadwick Boseman) homeland of Wakanda will play a large part in the proceedings, and, given that production on INFINITY WAR was happening simultaneously with BLACK PANTHER, it was all the more important that the two teams collaborated to make sure that both versions of Wakanda were aligned. BLACK PANTHER director Ryan Coogler spoke with io9 recently and commented on how the BLACK PANTHER and INFINITY WAR crews worked together.
So what [Infinity War directors the Russo Brothers] would do is, they would send their production design team and their VFX team to come spend time with me and our production design and VFX team. And they would ask questions. Even with their writers [Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely], as they were writing, they were thinking about, ‘What scene does this?’ ‘What kind of things in the Wakanda that you are building have these things?’ ‘Where would this kind of thing happen?’ So as we were really fleshing out Wakanda, we would tell them all about it so that their ideas could track. [The Infinity War team] would spend time with our actors when they could, just so they could get ready to do what they need to do in their film.
After that frustratingly brief tease in CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR, I'm absolutely ready to dive into Wakanda for BLACK PANTHER, and knowing that we'll be seeing even more in AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR is the cherry on top. As fun as it will be to explore an entirely new slice of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it's also a relief that BLACK PANTHER seems to be a pretty damn good movie all around, at least, judging by its overwhelmingly positive first reactions.
BLACK PANTHER will hit theaters on February 16th, followed by AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR on May 4, 2018.