Ryan Coogler revealed that Chadwick Boseman was “too sick” to read the original 180-page script for the Black Panther sequel before his death in 2020, forcing a complete rewrite of the film’s direction.

The Black Panther director opened up during an appearance on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, sharing that Boseman never got the chance to read the first draft of the sequel due to his declining health. “I finished it, and I hit him up to read it, and he was too sick to read, bro. That was kind of how the timing was,” Ryan Coogler said. “He was at a place where it wasn’t going to happen.”

Boseman died in August 2020 after a private battle with colon cancer. His passing sent shockwaves through Hollywood and left Coogler with the daunting task of reimagining the sequel without its lead. The final version, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, was released in 2022 and centered on T’Challa’s sister Shuri, played by Letitia Wright, as she wrestled with grief and stepped into her brother’s legacy.

Coogler also shared details about the original storyline, which would have followed T’Challa and his eight-year-old son during a sacred Wakandan rite of passage known as the Ritual of Eight. The father and son would have spent eight days in the wild, stripped of tools, only to be ambushed by “a different version of Namor,” who eventually became the main antagonist in the released sequel.

“It was insane, and Chadwick was going to kill it, but life goes as it goes,” Coogler said. “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 Chad in the first Panther, but I realised I was just scratching the surface.”

Despite the heartbreak, Coogler said he found purpose in shifting the story’s focus to the women of Wakanda. “We made a movie about women, and we made that movie while I was nursing a broken heart,” he said.

Now, Coogler is preparing to return to Wakanda once again. A third installment is in the works, and he made it clear that the story is personal.

“I got this movie on my heart,” he said. “And yeah, from the outside looking in, you might say, ‘Man, why this f**king dude making another one of those?’ But that’s totally fine, that question makes sense. And it’s my job as a filmmaker to show why.”

Denzel Washington is the only actor confirmed for Black Panther 3 so far, though details about his character remain under wraps. The sequel’s release date has not been announced.