The Original Script For BLACK PANTHER: WAKANDA FOREVER Told a Father and Son Save The World Story

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever director Ryan Coogler has revealed the story details for the original script for the Marvel film that was written. This was the story they were going to tell before Chadwick Boseman tragically passed away and I love the direction that it was going to go.

The Black Panther sequel was originally going to tell a father and son between T’Challa and his five-year-old son, who he meets for the first time after he returns from The Blip. Coogler shared the following information in an interview with New York Times:

“It was, ‘What are we going to do about the Blip?’ [In Marvel’s ‘Avengers: Infinity War,’ T’Challa is one of billions of people who suddenly vanish, only to be brought back by the Avengers five years later.] That was the challenge. It was absolutely nothing like what we made. It was going to be a father-son story from the perspective of a father, because the first movie had been a father-son story from the perspective of the sons.

“In the script, T’Challa was a dad who’d had this forced five-year absence from his son’s life. The first scene was an animated sequence. You hear Nakia [T’Challa’s love interest, played by Lupita Nyong’o] talking to Toussaint [the couple’s child, introduced in ‘Wakanda Forever” in a post-credits sequence]. She says, ‘Tell me what you know about your father.’ You realize that he doesn’t know his dad was the Black Panther. He’s never met him, and Nakia is remarried to a Haitian dude. Then, we cut to reality and it’s the night that everybody comes back from the Blip. You see T’Challa meet the kid for the first time.

“Then it cuts ahead three years and he’s essentially co-parenting. We had some crazy scenes in there for Chad, man. Our code name for the movie was ‘Summer Break,’ and the movie was about a summer that the kid spends with his dad. For his eighth birthday, they do a ritual where they go out into the bush and have to live off the land. But something happens and T’Challa has to go save the world with his son on his hip. That was the movie.”

That movie would have made me happy. They could have only done it with Boseman, though. Namor was still going to be the villain in the film and the leader of the undersea nation Talokan. But, Coogler adds:

“But it was a combination. Val [the C.I.A. director, played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus] was much more active. It was basically a three-way conflict between Wakanda, the U.S. and Talokan. But it was all mostly from the child’s perspective.”

This all just sounds like the original film would have been absolutely wonderful. What do you all think about the original story that was planned for the Black Panther sequel?