Ryan Coogler reveals original Black Panther 2 script details, including T'Challa and his son

With Black Panther 3 having been officially confirmed last year, fans of the Marvel film are on tenterhooks to see just what Ryan Coogler has up his sleeve this time around.

The second film, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, saw T'Challa's sister Shuri (Letitia Wright) take the lead as the titular character after the sad passing of Chadwick Boseman in 2020 from colon cancer.

The 2018 original film was a major global hit, with writer and director Coogler having had plans for Boseman's leading role in the second instalment. Coogler was firmly in the development stage of the second film when Boseman died in 2020, leading to Coogler to completely change the direction of the film.

Speaking on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, Coogler revealed his original plans for Black Panther's sequel which would've revolved around T'Challa and his 8-year-old son.

“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,” Coogler said on the podcast.

“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.”

The script for the second Black Panther film was actually complete and Coogler had reached out to Boseman for him to read it but Boseman was "too sick" at that point to do so.

Coogler said: “He was at a place where it wasn’t going to happen,” the director added. “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***ed 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.”

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As for the future of Black Panther, Coogler is busy working on the scripts for the third film, which will feature acclaimed actor Denzel Washington. Washington previously revealed that Coogler was writing a part for him in the film, with details about the role, the plot line and the characters being kept under wraps for now.

However, Coogler did address speculation around the need for the third film and some of the negative fan reaction to the news. Speaking on the podcast, Coogler said: "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 fucking 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.”

Coogler has had an astronomically great year with the release of Sinners and the confirmation that he'll be rebooting The X Files. Coogler has recently confirmed that Black Panther 3 is his "next movie" while speaking at a Sinners panel talk. So, that means that hopefully there will be further Black Panther updates very soon!

Black Panther and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever are available to stream on Disney Plus. You can sign up to Disney Plus from £5.99 a month now.

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