Ryan Coogler Reveals Chadwick Boseman Was Too Ill to Read Original ‘Black Panther 2’ Script

Ryan Coogler recently spoke about the original script he wrote for Black Panther 2 and the late Chadwick Boseman’s involvement in it.

In an interview on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, Coogler revealed that he had sent the script to Boseman, but the actor was too sick to read it due to his battle with colon cancer. “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,” Coogler said.

The director also shared details about what the original story would have included. The script featured a storyline called the Ritual of 8. “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,” Coogler explained.

“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.”

Coogler said he loved that version of the script and put a lot of effort into it, as he had grown to understand Boseman as a performer. “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 Chad in the first Panther, but I realized I was just scratching the surface,” he added.

The filmmaker is also preparing for a third Black Panther movie. Addressing rumors about whether T’Challa would be recast, Coogler said he is approaching the project with care and passion.

“I’m in it for my heart. I got this movie on my heart. And yeah, from the outside looking in, you might say, ‘Man, why this f*** 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,” he told the podcast.

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