Ryan Coogler still loves the original ‘Black Panther 2’ script

Los Angeles: Filmmaker Ryan Coogler had finished a 180-page script for ‘Black Panther 2’ that focused on T'Challa’s facing off against the main villain Namor while trying to complete an important ritual with his eight-year-old son, but Chadwick Boseman’s death in 2020 changed everything.

Boseman’s death from colon cancer at the age of 43 forced Coogler to alter the script completely in 2022’s ‘Black Panther: Wakanda Forever’. The director, however, still loves what he wrote originally as the follow-up to Marvel’s first black superhero movie, ‘Black Panther’ in 2018.

On a recent episode of the ‘Happy Sad Confused’ podcast, Coogler, 39, spoke about the months before Boseman’s death. “Honestly, what happened was, I finished it and he was too sick to read it, bro. That was kind of how that timing was. He was at a place where it wasn’t gonna happen,” Coogler told host Josh Horowitz.

The director believes the original script would have allowed him to showcase Boseman’s talent as a performer like never before. “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 realised I was just scratching the surface. It was like a dump truck on him,” he said.

“The big thing about the script was a thing called the ‘Ritual of 8’ where, when a prince is eight years old, he has to go spend eight days in the bush with his father. Amongst those eight days, they have to go into the bush without any tools and the prince has to listen and do everything that’s asked of him by his father, but the rule is that for those eight days, the prince can ask his father any question and the father has to answer,” Coogler said.

It’s during those eight days that Namor (Tenoch Huerta) would’ve staged his attack. “It was a different version of Namor in that script. (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 while he was engaged in negotiations, fights and s***. His son had to be right there or they’d violate this ritual that had never been broken. So that was what the movie was. It was insane. And Chad was going to kill it, but life goes as it goes.”

The filmmaker said Boseman meant a lot to him. “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, which f***ed me up pretty good,” Coogler said.

He added, “I wonder if he knew how much he meant to me. I did wonder.”

Coogler, who has built a reputation as a visionary and talented director in a very short career and most recently made the critically and commercially loved ‘Sinners’, is now working on the third instalment of ‘Black Panther’.