Black Panther 3 is officially dated for December 15, 2028, and the film’s central casting choice is David Jonsson, who will play Toussaint, also known as T’Challa II, the grown son of the original Black Panther who was introduced in the post-credits scene of Wakanda Forever alongside Lupita Nyong’o’s Nakia while Rihanna’s Lift Me Up played over the credits.
That child has now grown up, and the film will follow him coming of age with his eyes set on the crown of Wakanda.
David Jonsson is your new Black Panther.
Black Panther 3, directed by Ryan Coogler, arrives in theaters December 15, 2028. pic.twitter.com/JILHDOelQE
— Marvel Studios (@MarvelStudios) July 26, 2026
Coogler also announced that Black Panther 3 will be shot entirely on larger format celluloid film, the first time any MCU production has been filmed that way, a creative decision that signals this entry is being treated with a level of intentionality and craft that the franchise’s legacy demands. Denzel Washington, whose casting was previously announced, rounds out a cast that also brought Letitia Wright and Winston Duke back to the Hall H stage alongside Coogler, Kevin Feige, and Jonsson.
The weight behind this announcement is impossible to separate from the history of the franchise. The original Black Panther landed in 2018, grossed 1.3 billion dollars worldwide, and won three Academy Awards while launching Chadwick Boseman into a global superstardom that felt both earned and electric. Boseman died of cancer in August 2020, and Wakanda Forever, released in 2022, carried the enormous task of processing that loss on screen while continuing the story, ultimately earning 859 million dollars and an Oscar for Ruth E. Carter’s costume design, which made her the first Black woman in history to win two Academy Awards.
Jonsson arrives at this franchise with serious momentum of his own, having headlined Alien: Romulus in 2024 and The Long Walk last year, both of which had their own Hall H presentations, meaning he has now stood in that room three times in relatively quick succession and each time the stakes have gotten considerably larger. Coogler introduced him by noting his work in The Long Walk, a Stephen King adaptation in which Jonsson and Cooper Hoffman play two young men who build an unlikely friendship in a competition that is exactly as grim as the title suggests. The next chapter of Wakanda now belongs to him, and December 2028 cannot arrive fast enough.
