Black Panther director Ryan Coogler has reflected on making Wakanda Forever after the tragic loss of Chadwick Boseman – and shared why he thinks more people watch the sequel at home than the first movie.
"I learned that I was more resilient than I give myself credit for – I'll say that was the biggest thing," he told The Hollywood Reporter of the experience. "And that movie gets watched at home so much more than the other Panther did. I think about that: People may be watching when they want to feel something specific."
Boseman died in August 2020, while Coogler was writing the sequel's script. The film was reconfigured to revolve around the loss of Boseman's character T'Challa, with Shuri's grief at the loss of her brother at the heart of the film.
"I would look around to people who had been making movies as long as I had been alive, bro, sometimes longer, and they would say: 'I've never seen anything like this,'" Coogler reflected. "We had to work from the place of being brokenhearted, or else it wouldn't have got done… Me and Chad were getting closer, so it was like a wound to the heart. It was like somebody had taken the sun away and we were all these planets floating."
Both Black Panther movies are regarded as some of the best Marvel movies so far, and a third film, Black Panther 3, is in the works, though details are scarce at the moment.
"If it was anybody but you, I would say, 'I can neither confirm or deny.' But we're working on it hard," Coogler shared last year. "Yeah, it's the next movie."
Black Panther 3 doesn't yet have a release date. While you wait, check out our guide to all the upcoming Marvel movies and shows on the way.
