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Ryan Coogler Reveals Original Plans for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever Story

December 23, 2022 | Posted by Jeremy Thomas
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever Image Credit: Marvel Studios

Warning: Plot spoilers follow for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever had to be significantly changed when Chadwick Boseman passed, and Ryan Coogler has revealed what the story with T’challa would have been. Coogler recently spoke with the New York Times and revealed the original story for the film, which would have centered aroung Boseman’s T’challa and dealt with the fact that the character had been gone for years because of “The Blip” (aka Thanos snapping half the universe to death). You can see a couple of highlights below:

On the original story: “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.”

On how the original script played out: “In the 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 [the couple’s child]. 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.”

On if Namor would have still been the antagonist: “Yeah. But it was a combination. Val[entina Allegra de la Fontaine, played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus] was much more active. It was basically a three-way conflict between Wakanda, the U.S. and Talokan. But it was all mostly from the child’s perspective.”

The film that was written after Boseman’s death saw T’challa having passed due to an illness. Eventually, Shuri (Letitia Wright) takes up the mantle and battles Namor. The film has grossed $442.7 million domestically and $790.9 million worldwide thus far.