Coogler: Black Panther script was done before Chadwick’s death

• Chadwick Boseman died from colon cancer earlier this year.
• Ryan Coogler had been working on the script for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.
• At the time of his death, the script was already complete and ready for final draughts.

For Black Panther: Wakanda Forever director and screenwriter Ryan Coogler, losing his star meant that, sooner than he would have liked, he would have to return to the drawing board and find the fortitude to craft a story in which he knew his friend wouldn’t be physically involved.

Everyone in 2020 was stunned by the awful news that Chadwick Boseman had died from colon cancer.

Even more devastating was the fact that the actor fought the sickness in silence for several years, with virtually no one aware of his failing health.

Coogler admitted in an interview with The Official Black Panther Podcast that he considered leaving the project because it was too difficult to move on. At the time of Boseman’s death, the original script — which, of course, centred entirely on King T’Challa — was already complete and ready for final draughts, according to the director:

“I had just finished it. My last conversation with him was calling him and asking if he wanted to read it before I got notes from the studio. That was the last time we spoke, and he passed maybe a couple of weeks after I finished. […] He was tired, bro. I could tell he was tired. I’d been trying to get a hold of him for a few days. […] I could tell something was up. But he was joking and laughing, talking about how he was planning a wedding in South Carolina, talking about the people he was going to invite. […] And then he said he didn’t want to read it, because he didn’t want to get in the way of whatever notes the studio might have, so he was like ‘It’s better if I read it later.’ But I found out later that he was too tired to read anything.”

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Coogler reveals that Namor (Tenoch Huerta) and the realm of Atlantis were always intended to be a part of the adventure, which was developed before Aquaman was released, despite the fact that most people will never get the chance to read the script. He began composing the script in late 2018:

“The second script was like a T’Challa vehicle. I was like, ‘ok, we set the world up, now we’re going to do the deepest dive into this guy that you can imagine. And that was what excited me even more: I knew Chad[wick Boseman] better as a performer, and I knew him better as a guy, [and] T’Challa as a character after making that first film. So I got to writing that thing immediately.”

The revised version of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever incorporates T’Challa’s death into the narrative and, as Coogler mentions in the interview, becomes a film that addresses the truth that occasionally leaders pass away.

At the same time, the prolonged runtime of 2 hours and 40 minutes allows for both grieving and the introduction of a new Black Panther, presumably T’Challa’s sister Shuri (Letitia Wright). But we won’t know for certain until the film’s premiere.

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On November 11, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever premieres.

Watch the official trailer below:

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