Ryan Coogler just gave a sneak peak of his original plans for “Black Panther 2.”
The Bay Area-born director appeared on the “Happy Sad Confused” podcast as a part of his award season press run for “Sinners.” He revealed to host Josh Horomitz how he initially imagined the Marvel film’s sequel before star Chadwick Boseman’s death.
The film was to focus on a journey between T’Challa (Boseman) and his 8-year-old son who audiences got a glimpse of at the end of “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.” Namor as the main villain was consistent in Coogler’s original plans.
“The big thing with the script was a thing called the Ritual of 8 where a prince is 8 years old, he must spend 8 days in the bush with his father,” the director said. “The rule is for those 8 days the prince can ask the father any question and the father must answer. In the course of those 8 days, Namor launches an attack… 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 violate this ritual that had never been broken. It was insane. Chadwick was going to kill it, but life goes as it goes.”
Boseman helped Coogler break box office records as T’Challa in “Black Panther,” released in 2018. The beloved actor had been privately battling colon cancer for four years up until August 28, 2020. He was 43.
Coogler said he reached out to Boseman to read his 180-page draft but the actor was “at a place where it wasn’t going to happen.”
“Our relationship was very interesting,” he continued. “He meant a lot to me but I found out after his passing from his family and his friends about how much I meant to him. That f–ked me up pretty good. I wonder if he knew how much he meant to me… But I loved that script. 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 him in the first ‘Panther’ but I realized I was just scratching the surface.”
Coogler previously said that Boseman’s death led him to consider walking away from filmmaking. “I didn’t know if I could make another movie period, [let alone] another ‘Black Panther’ movie, because it hurt a lot,” he previously told Entertainment Weekly.
What the director was able to create with “Wakanda Forever” became a moving dedication to Boseman, exploring grief, ritualistic mourning and legacy.
A third iteration of “Black Panther” will be Coogler’s next project. It is currently in development at Marvel Studios.
