2016’s Captain America: Civil War remains one of the most important Marvel Cinematic Universe movies for a variety of reasons, including introducing Chadwick Boseman’s T’Challa, a.k.a. Black Panther. Following that memorable debut, Boseman reprsied the character for his own solo movie, Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame, and he was supposed to return for the Black Panther sequel. Sadly, the actor died on August 28, 2020 at the age of 43, and Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige has now shared the last thing Boseman told him before his passing.
Kevin Feige recalled this while speaking with Ryan Coogler, director of the Black Panther movies, and Deadpool & Wolverine director Shawn Levy at the dedication celebration for the Universtiy of Southern California’s Kevin Feige Division of Film & Television Production for its School of Cinematic Arts, with all three men being USC graduates. During the conversation (via THR), Feige said that during his last meeting with Chadwick Boseman, the actor shared how much fun he was having voicing an alternate version of T’Challa in the animated series What If… ?. Boseman was hoping to bring that same kind of “vibe” to Black Panther 2, but he unforunately never got to do so.
The Marvel Studios president talked about this to reflect a broader point about how he took Chadwick Boseman, as well as other colleagues and friends, for granted. With this shared universe allowing for continued colaborations with many actors and other talents, Feige just assumed he’d spend more time with Boseman once the time came to make another Black Panther movie or Avengers movie. He continued:
Article continues belowWe will be back in there, that was always my expectation. So the need to set a dinner or a lunch to say hi, I just never do. Because we’re busy and because we’re going to have a next time. And that hit me like a ton of bricks when I realized that there wasn’t going to be a next time.
As for Ryan Coogler, he shared back in 2022 that he last spoke with Chadwick Boseman a few weeks before he died. The filmmaker called the actor up to get his thoughts on the Black Panther 2 script before it recevied notes from the studio. However, Coogler revealed last December that Boseman was too sick to read the script by that point. So there was never a point where a T’Challa-focused Black Panther sequel was ever in development past that stage, and after Boseman died, Coogler and Marvel decided to have T’Challa die offscreen as well and have his sister, Letitia Wright’s Shuri, succeed him in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.
It’s a shame that Kevin Feige and Ryan Coogler, and really the entire world, didn’t get to spend more time with Chadwick Boseman and see him not only play T’Challa many more times, but inhabit various other roles. Boseman’s passing went on to help inspire Coogler’s latest movie, Sinners, which is nominated in 16 categories at the 98th Academy Awards. We’ll see how it fares this Sunday on ABC, and Coogler is also hard at work putting together Black Panther 3 as his next movie.
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