In a recent podcast interview, Black Panther filmmaker Ryan Coogler shared some insights into the original plans for Black Panther II, which changed dramatically after the death of franchise star Chadwick Boseman in August of 2020. The eventual film, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, centered on the death of King T’Challa and the succession process as both leader of Wakanda and the Black Panther, set against a war with Namor (Tenoch Huerta) and the army of the fictional nation of Talokan.
In the original screenplay, Coogler says the war with Namor still would have happened, but the main conflict would have involved T’Challa and his son, who would be stuck with him throughout the conflict and unable to seek refuge.
Saying that he was proud of the script and sorry it didn’t get made, Coogler said that it was nevertheless a blessing to get to make a version of Wakanda Forever that centered on the women of Wakanda — something he was proud to do. He also promised that a third film is still on the way, and that he needs to make that film because he’s passionate about it, saying, “I’m in it for my heart. I got this movie on my heart.”
“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 told Josh Horowitz’s Happy Sad Confused podcast. “The big thing about the script was a thing called the Ritual of Eight where, [when] a prince is eight years old, he has to go spend 8 days in the bush with his father. The rule is for those eight days the prince can ask the father any question and the father has to answer. During the course of those eight days, Namor launches an attack….It was a different version of Namor in that script, but [T’Challa] 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.”
Coogler explained that he did finish the script before Boseman passed away, but the actor never had the energy to read it, as he was already very sick by the time it was done. He said that he felt like he had barely scratched the surface of what Boseman was capable of as an actor, and had been looking forward to seeing what the star could do with the second film.
“Our relationship was very interesting, ’cause he meant a lot of me but I found out after his passing from his family and his friends about how much I meant to him, which fucked me up pretty good,” Coogler told Horowitz. “I wondered if he knew just how much he meant to me. I did wonder, but he protected me from a lot; our relationship was one of a lot of protection. I was convinced, on the toughest days on Panther, that I was gonna get fired….He was like, ‘I would never let that happen to you.’”
Black Panther went on to make over $1 billion at the global box office and was Marvel’s best-reviewed movie to date, earning a Best Picture nomination. The sequel made $859 million — a significant decline, but roughly in line with expectations given the overall decline of Marvel’s drawing power since Avengers: Endgame. The film also spawned two Disney+ spinoff series, the live-action Ironheart, based on a character introduced in Wakanda Forever, and the animated Eyes of Wakanda.
