Ryan Coogler recently shared his script for Black Panther 2 that he wrote before Chadwick Boseman’s passing. For the first time, Coogler revealed details of his original 180-page script.
“The big thing with the script was a thing called the Ritual of 8, where a prince is 8 years old,” Coogler told Variety. “He must spend 8 days in the bush with his father,” the director said. “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.”
Coogler said he reached out to Boseman about the script, but he was too ill to read it.
“He was at a place where it wasn’t going to happen,” he shared.
Coogler also detailed his relationship with Boseman.
“Our relationship was very interesting. He meant a lot to me, but I found out after his passing from his family and his friends about how much I meant to him. That f–ked me up pretty good,” Coogler recalled. “I wonder if he knew how much he meant to me… 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.”
Coogler also went on to say that he wanted to use Kraven the Hunter in the first Black Panther film. Because the character is owned by Sony and not Disney, he couldn’t use it.
“[I] wanted to base it on the Christopher Priest run of ‘Panther,’ And his run starts with Panther and Kraven in the kitchen,” Coogler said. “That’s the first thing. It’s Ross, Panther, and Kraven fighting in the kitchen.”