Photo Credit: Marvel Studios
Ryan Coogler has explained what Black Panther 2 was originally going to look like had Chadwick Boseman been able to reprise his role as T’Challa.
Marvel Studios’ Black Panther 2, also known as Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, was released in 2022. Directed by Coogler, the Black Panther sequel sees Letitia Wright and Lupita Nyong’o reprise their roles as Shuri and Nakia, while it also introduces Tenoch Huerta Mejía’s Namor character.
Chadwick was originally supposed to reprise his role as T’Challa in Black Panther 2 after his MCU character previously appeared in Captain America: Civil War, Black Panther, Avengers: Infinity War, and Avengers: Endgame. Boseman, however, tragically passed away in 2020, and the film’s script had to be reworked.
What did Ryan Coogler say about Black Panther 2?
Speaking with Josh Horowitz on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, Coogler was asked if he could share at least one scene from the original Black Panther 2 script that would have featured Boseman.
“It was like a 180-page draft chock-full of them,” Coogler answered. “The big thing about the script was that it was this thing called the Ritual of Eight. Where, when a prince is eight years old, he has to go spend eight days in the bush with his father. Among those eight days, they have to go into the bush without any tools. The prince has to listen and do everything that’s asked of him by his father, but 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. So that was what the movie was. He had to deal with somebody — and it was a different version of Namor in that script, but he had to deal with someone who was like insanely dangerous. But, because of that ritual, his son had to be joined at his hip the whole time. So while he was engaging in negotiations and fights, his son had to be right there, or else they’d have to violate this ritual, which had never been broken.”
Marvel’s Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is now streaming on Disney+.
