Ryan Coogler Reveals Original Plan for "Black Panther 2" Prior to Chadwick Boseman's Death

During a recent appearance on a podcast, Black Panther director Ryan Coogler revealed the original story plans for the second Black Panther film prior to Chadwick Boseman's untimely passing.

What's Happening:

• Variety reports that director Ryan Coogler, who this past year directed the extremely successful Sinners, appeared on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, where he revealed the original story plans for Black Panther 2.
• Coogler was well into development on the sequel when lead actor Chadwick Boseman, who played the titular Black Panther, died in August 2020 from colon cancer.
• The original script focused on an adventure between Boseman’s T’Challa and the character’s 8-year-old son.
  • “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,” Coogler 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.”
• Coogler confirmed that he finished this version of the Black Panther 2 script and reached out to Boseman to read it, but “he was too sick” to do so.
• The film eventually became Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, instead focusing on Shuri (Letitia Michelle Wright) as a new Black Panther, while emotionally paying tribute to T’Challa.
• Namor, played by Tenoch Huerta in Wakanda Forever, would still have been the main villain in the orignal script.
• Coogler also revealed that he originally wanted to use Kraven the Hunter in the first Black Panther movie, but he was blocked from doing so, as the character is owned by Sony and not Disney.
• Sony, of course, ended up making Kraven the Hunter, which was a box office disaster when it was released in December 2024.
• After the success of Sinners, Coogler is now in development on a third Black Panther movie at Marvel Studios.
• You can watch Coogler's full interview on the Happy Sad Confused podcast below.

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