Denzel Washington Says He Has a Role in Black Panther 3 — and It Will Mark 1 of His Final Movies Before He Retires

Denzel Washington appears to have the rest of his acting career mapped out.

While Washington, 69, promoted his new movie, Gladiator II, during an appearance on Australia's Today show on Monday, Nov. 11, the actor said that Black Panther writer-director Ryan Coogler intends to create a role for Washington in Black Panther 3.

"For me, it's about the filmmaker. Especially at this point in my career, I'm only interested in working with the best," Washington said in response to a question over whether he felt any "pressure" filming a sequel to 2000's Gladiator, which won five Academy Awards.

"I don't know how many more films I'm going to make. Probably not that many. I want to do things I haven't done. I played Othello at 22; I'm about to play Othello at 70," he said, referencing his upcoming Broadway run in Shakespeare's Othello with Jake Gyllenhaal. "After that, I'm playing Hannibal. After that, I've been talking with Steve McQueen about a film. After that, Ryan Coogler is writing a part for me in the next Black Panther."

During that interview, Washington added that he also intends to star in a film adaptation of Othello and act in another Shakespeare production, King Lear, before retiring from acting.

Marvel Studios has not officially announced that a third Black Panther movie is in development. The film series last brought comic book fans to the fictional African country Wakanda in 2022's Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, which saw much of the original 2018 movie's cast return and grapple — both on-screen and off — with original series lead Chadwick Boseman's 2020 death at 43 from colon cancer.

Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE's free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer​​, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories. 

In that movie, Letitia Wright's character, Shuri, takes on the Black Panther mantle; the film's final moments also reveal that Boseman's character, T'Challa, and Lupita Nyong'o's Nakia welcomed a son, who is also named T'Challa.

Wright, 31, told Variety at the 2023 Golden Globe Awards that a third Black Panther movie was "already in the works," though she said she believed there would be some time between the sequel an third installment. Marvel has not yet confirmed any movies set for release beyond the fourth and fifth Avengers movies, which will release in May 2026 and May 2027, respectively.

Washington's potential addition to the Black Panther series would mark a kind of full-circle moment for him and Boseman. While the pair never acted on-screen together, Boseman revealed in June 2019 that Washington once "gracefully and privately" paid for him and a number of his classmates at Howard University to attend a summer acting program at Oxford University in England.

“There is no Black Panther without Denzel Washington,” Boseman recalled to an audience while presenting Washington with the American Film Institute’s Lifetime Achievement Award.