Ryan Coogler Had A Different Storyline for 'Black Panther: Wakanda Forever'

American film director Ryan Coogler recently revealed the backstory of what his latest release, 'Black Panther: Wakanda Forever' would have been before the original film's lead star Chadwick Boseman's death.

According to the entertainment news website 'Deadline', Coogler spoke to the 'New York Times' and said the original intent was to make the film center on the relationship between fathers and sons. The conflict would have addressed T'Challa's five-year absence following 'The Blip', the Thanos-caused mass extinction in which half of the universe's population was turned to dust and eventually brought back.

Prince Namor, the sub-mariner, would have remained the main antagonist in the sequel. T'Challa would have been married to Nakia (Lupita Nyong'o), his on-again, off-again love interest, who gave birth to a son, Toussaint, while he was away. Even while the Black Panther engaged Namor in combat, dealing with that new reality would have been the priority.

"It was, 'What are we going to do about the Blip?' That was the challenge. It was absolutely nothing like what we made. It was going to be a father-son story from the perspective of a father because the first movie had been a father-son story from the perspective of the sons," Coogler said to the 'Times', reported 'Deadline'.

He continued: "In the original script, T'Challa was a dad who'd had this forced five-year absence from his son's life. The first scene was an animated sequence."