Ryan Coogler Tried To Share ‘Black Panther 2’ With Chadwick Boseman

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is a movie I have a great soft spot for. It isn’t the best superhero movie, and not even the best MCU film, but, dammit, it was so mired in tragedy that its very existence is impressive. What should have been an impossible task, continuing the story after the devastating passing of its star, Chadwick Boseman, put it in an unfortunately unique position: trying to honor the real man who had died while still keeping the fictional story going. Regardless, Ryan Coogler rose to the challenge.

The film works best during its quiet moments, as its cast of incredible actors grapples with the very real grief they faced in real life. However, that can all be dragged down by the stereotypical Marvel bloat the film is saddled with that the first one managed to avoid. But, again, Coogler was dealing with the impossible. No one in their right mind should fault him for making the movie that he did, but it was almost something very different, as he recently detailed.

The original story for Black Panther 2 had been revealed previously, but Coogler gave more details about the script during a recent sitdown with the Happy Sad Confused podcast. “The big thing about the script was a thing called the Ritual of 8 where, [when] a prince is 8 years old, he has to go spend 8 days in the bush with his father,” he explained. “The rule is for those 8 days the prince can ask the father any question and the father has to answer. During the course of those 8 days, Namor launches an attack … and it was a different version of Namor in that script, but he had to deal with someone who’s insanely dangerous, but because of this ritual, his son had to be joined at his hip the whole time … or else they’d have to violate this ritual that had never been broken. It was insane, and Chadwick was going to kill it, but life goes as it goes.”

That does sound like a pretty incredible idea, and Coogler had fully intended to shoot it with Chadwick Boseman, and even tried to share it with him, but the actor would never read it. “I finished it, and I hit him up to read it, and he was too sick to read, bro. That was kind of how the timing was,” Coogler noted, which is absolutely devastating. “I loved that script,” Coogler continued. “I put so much into that version of the movie because I felt like I had gotten to know Chadwick as a performer … I threw a lot at Chad in the first Panther, but I realized I was just scratching the surface.”

Coogler’s next film will be Black Panther 3, and he says he has a good reason for that being the case, despite coming off a massive and original hit in Sinners. “I’m in it for my heart. I got this movie on my heart,” he said. “And yeah, from the outside looking in, you might say, ‘Man, why this f***ing dude making another one of those?’ But that’s totally fine, that question makes sense. And it’s my job as a filmmaker to show why.”

I can only imagine how emotional it was for Coogler to return to that world after Boseman’s passing, but he did it. Hearing him say he will be returning with his “heart” is wonderful. He is clearly attached to the material and to Boseman’s legacy. If anyone can honor both, it’s him.