Ryan Coogler Offers Insight Into BLACK PANTHER 2 Script Before Chadwick Boseman's Death- A "180-Page Draft" That "I Loved"

Black Panther (2018) was a huge hit with fans, introducing the Wakandan king to the MCU and establishing a whole new world of heroes with an incredible lore.

Writer and director Ryan Coogler put his whole heart into making that film, and it showed, but the future of the franchise was altered irreparably when its star, Chadwick Boseman, lost his battle with cancer and passed away in 2020, before the second film could be made. But not before the first draft of the film’s script could be written, which Coogler “loved” very much.

Coogler recently appeared on the Happy Sad Confused Podcast, where he explained to host Josh Horowitz that his original Black Panther 2 script focused on an adventure between Boseman’s T’Challa and the character’s 8-year-old son. Namor, played by Tenoch Huerta in Wakanda Forever, was still the main villain.

“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. 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.

“He was at a place where it wasn’t going to happen. Our relationship was very interesting. 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.

“That f*cked me up pretty good. I wonder if he knew how much he meant to me. I did wonder… But 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 him in the first ‘Panther’ but I realized I was just scratching the surface. It was a 180-page draft.”

It sounds like it would have been an amazing movie! I wish Boseman hadn’t gotten cancer, and would have been around to make it. Coogler is currently working on Black Panther 3, which is predicted to hit theaters in early 2028, after the events of Avengers: Secret Wars.

via: Variety