Last August, the world was shocked to learn that Chadwick Boseman passed away due to cancer. The shock came from the fact that the actor had not told anyone outside of his family about his diagnosis. And not only was it a huge personal loss for filmmaker Ryan Coogler, as he was a close friend of Boseman, it also meant that the work he was doing for “Black Panther 2” had to be completely redone.
Speaking to THR, Coogler talked about the loss of Boseman and how he knows the actor would have wanted the cast and crew of “Black Panther” to keep pressing on in a new direction. But that doesn’t mean it was an easy prospect for the filmmaker, who was in the middle of his script for the sequel when he found out about the actor’s passing.
“It’s difficult,” said Coogler. “You’ve got to keep going when you lose loved ones. I know Chad wouldn’t have wanted us to stop. He was somebody who was so about the collective. ‘Black Panther,’ that was his movie. He was hired to play that role before anybody else was even thought of, before I was hired, before any of the actresses were hired. On that set, he was all about everybody else. Even though he was going through what he was going through, he was checking in on them, making sure they were good. If we cut his coverage, he would stick around and read lines off-camera [to help other actors with their performances]. So it would be harder for me to stop. Truthfully. I’d feel him yelling at me, like, ‘What are you doing?’ So you keep going.”
Marvel Studios and Coogler have yet to announce the plans for what is going to happen with T’Challa in “Black Panther 2.” We know the studio won’t recast the character and the filmmaker isn’t going to use digital wizardry to keep Boseman in the film. So, you have to assume the mantle of Black Panther will be passed to another character.
“Black Panther 2” is scheduled to arrive in theaters on July 22, 2022.