Ryan Coogler revealed that the original script for Black Panther 2 was about a father-son relationship. According to Coogler, The film would have followed T’Challa getting to know his son post-Blip, and “for his 8th birthday, they do a ritual where they go out into the bush & have to live off the land.”
Speaking to The New York Times, Coogler said T’Challa is one of the billions of people who suddenly disappear, only to be revived five years later by the Avengers. That was the challenge. It was nothing like what we created. It was supposed to be a father-son story.
Coogler told, 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 [T’Challa’s love interest, played by Lupita Nyong’o] talking to Toussaint [the couple’s child, introduced in “Wakanda Forever” in a post-credits sequence]. 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.
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.
Following the death of Chadwick Boseman, Coogler completely rewrote the script to Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. The film has grossed over $790 million worldwide.
The film stars Letitia Wright as Shuri / Black Panther, alongside Lupita Nyong’o, Danai Gurira, Winston Duke, Florence Kasumba, Dominique Thorne, Michaela Coel, Tenoch Huerta Mejía, Martin Freeman, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and Angela Bassett.
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is now streaming on Disney+.
