Ryan Coogler reveals backstory of 'Black Panther: Wakanda Forever' before Chadwick Boseman's death
Dec 24, 2022
Washington [US], December 24 : American film director Ryan Coogler has revealed the backstory of what his latest release 'Black Panther: Wakanda Forever' would have been before the original film's lead star Chadwick Boseman's death.
According to Deadline, an entertainment news website, speaking to the New York Times, Coogler said the original intent was to make the film's center about the relationship between fathers and sons.
The conflict would have addressed T'Challa's five-year absence following 'The Blip', the Thanos-caused mass extinction in which half of the universe's population was turned to dust and eventually brought back.
Prince Namor, the Sub-Mariner, would have remained the main antagonist in the sequel. T'Challa would have been married to Nakia (Lupita Nyong'o), his on-again, off-again love interest, who gave birth to a son, Toussaint, while he was away. Even while the Black Panther engaged Namor in combat, dealing with that new reality would have been the priority.
"It was, "What are we going to do about the Blip? 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," Coogler said to the Times, reported Deadline.
He continued. "In the (original) 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 talking to Toussaint. 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," the filmmaker added, as per Deadline.
Boseman's impact is still deeply ingrained in popular culture. His breakthrough performance in 'Black Panther' made that movie the first superhero movie to be nominated for best picture at the Academy Awards.
