Ryan Coogler Says Chadwick Boseman Was Too Sick to Read His Original 'Black Panther 2' Script
Ryan Coogler is opening up about his original script for Black Panther 2.
The filmmaker recently revealed in a new interview that he sent the late Chadwick Boseman the original script, but the actor was too sick to read it.
“I finished it, and I hit him up to read it, and he was too sick to read, bro. That was kind of how the timing was,” Ryan said on the Happy Sad Confused podcast.
He also opened up more about the original idea, which of course, was altered after Chadwick passed away in 2020 from colon cancer.
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“The big thing about the script was a thing called the Ritual of 8 where, [when] a prince is 8 years old, he has to go spend 8 days in the bush with his father,” he shared. “The rule is for those 8 days the prince can ask the father any question and the father has to answer. During the course of those 8 days, Namor [Tenoch Huerta] launches an attack … and it was a different version of Namor in that script, but 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 have to violate this ritual that had never been broken. It was insane, and Chadwick was going to kill it, but life goes as it goes.”
“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,” he added. “I threw a lot at Chad in the first Panther, but I realized I was just scratching the surface.”
If you missed it, Ryan is set to return for a third Black Panther movie and he addressed rumors that Chadwick‘s character T’Challa would be recast.
“I’m in it for my heart. I got this movie on my heart,” Ryan said of skeptics of a third installment. “And yeah, from the outside looking in, you might say, ‘Man, why this f–king dude making another one of those?’ But that’s totally fine, that question makes sense. And it’s my job as a filmmaker to show why.”
Last month, Ryan helped unveil Chadwick‘s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.