Ryan Coogler recently spoke to Empire magazine where he opened up about the difficulty of working on a movie that had lost its lead star. According to the filmmaker, the tragedy led to an important question that would drive the cast and crew while working on the sequel: ‘How do you carry on in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds?’ “Unfortunately, that question became more and more relevant. Both for humanity as a whole, but also for the people in our production who were coming back for this one,” Coogler said. “It became super-relevant when we lost our bro.”
So how exactly did Ryan Coogler deal with the loss in Black Panther 2? The director chose to put the focus on the supporting cast. “This unique group is more like a band than it is a group of actors, and Chad was our lead singer,” Coogler explained. “So for me, it was like, ‘How do I figure out a song that they can still get up there and sing?’, in light of what we were dealing with.” Black Panther: Wakanda Forever will bring back Letitia Wright, Lupita Nyong’o, Danai Gurira, Winston Duke, Florence Kasumba, Martin Freeman, and Angela Bassett. They will be joined by Dominique Thorne as Riri Williams, Michaela Coel as a new Dora Milaje Aneka, and Tenoch Huerta as Namor. The sequel will premiere in theaters on November 11, 2022.
