The Black Panther franchise and entire MCU had to change course when Chadwick Boseman tragically passed away in August 2020. The actor was just 43, and while Marvel knew they would never replace him as T'Challa, they did try and continue Black Panther's legacy in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.
Ryan Coogler, the director of both Black Panther films, recently spoke about how different his original draft for the sequel was. Speaking to Josh Horowitz on a recent episode of Happy Sad Confused, Coogler revealed a story revolving around a Wakandan ritual 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 said. "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 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."
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"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," Coogler said of the 180-page original draft. "I threw a lot at Chad in the first Panther, but I realized I was just scratching the surface."
It seems highly unlikely we'll ever be able to read that script or see that story, but Coogler still did the best he could with Black Panther's sequel Wakanda Forever. We'll have to see how he handles his return to Wakanda in the upcoming third Black Panther movie.