Ryan Coogler detailed the original vision for Black Panther 2 ahead of star Chadwick Boseman‘s death from colon cancer at the age of 43 in August 2020.
“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,” he explained on a new episode of Josh Horowitz’s 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,” the Sinners writer-helmer 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 [played by Tenoch Huerta in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever] 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.”
Coogler continued of the 180-page draft he had written: “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 Chad in the first Panther, but I realized I was just scratching the surface.”
However, the filmmaker, who is the beginning stages of reviving The X Files for television, noted that with the Black Panther sequel he “got a chance to make a movie about women, which was so— I love that movie so much.”
Elsewhere, the Fruitvale Station director fondly remembered Boseman: “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. 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.’”
Coogler, who has since confirmed the Marvel threequel will be his next feature project, said of Black Panther 3 that he understands those who are skeptical of a new installment.
“I’m in it for my heart. I got this movie on my heart,” he explained. “And yeah, from the outside looking in, you might say, ‘Man, why this fucking 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.”