Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther: Wakanda Forever portrays the eponymous nation mourning King T’Challa’s death, while they protect their country from intervening powers. The plot reflects the real-life event of Chadwick Boseman’s (who played T’Challa) death, who died in August 2020 suffering from colon cancer. 

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Coogler revealed to Inverse during an interview that the original plot was laid out following similar themes of grief. The sequel would have featured Boseman reprising his role as the majestic king of Wakanda, who will be shown mourning the loss of time due to The Blip, a major event in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, due to which half of all the living things in the universe were chosen at random and exterminated. T’Challa was one of the superheroes who perished in the events of Avengers: Infinity War, only to be brought back in Avengers: Endgame. 

The original script was overhauled due to Boseman’s death in 2020.

“The tonal shift, I will say, was less of a shift than in [casting],” Coogler said, surprising the fans. 

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“The tone was going to be similar,” Coogler said about his original sequel plot. “The character was going to be grieving the loss of time, you know, coming back after being gone for five years. As a man with so much responsibility to so many, coming back after a forced five years absence, that’s what the film was tackling. He was grieving the time he couldn’t get back. Grief was a big part of it.”

“Who the protagonist was, the flaws of the protagonist, what the protagonist was dealing with in their journey, all of that stuff had to be different due to us losing him and the decisions that we made about moving forward,” he followed up. 

Coogler’s Black Panther: Wakanda Forever’s theatrical premiere is scheduled on 11 November 2022. It stars actors Letitia Wright, Lupita Nyong’o, Danai Gurira Winston Duke, Martin Freeman, and Angela Bassett who reprise their roles. The cast is joined by several newcomers like Dominique Thorne, Michaela Coel, and Tenoch Huerta.