Ryan Coogler Went Through “Complicated Grief” Working on ‘Black Panther: Wakanda Forever’ After Chadwick Boseman’s Death (2025)

Ryan Coogler went through a period of “complicated grief” after Chadwick Boseman’s death while he was working on Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.

At the time of Boseman’s 2022 passing, the second Black Panther installment was in the works. His death not only halted the film’s production but left the crew devastated in the wake of his death.

During a Thursday interview with The Guardian, Coogler said the crew got through the devastation by working on the sequel. “Sometimes it’s actually a relief having something to do, so you can’t sit in that terrible feeling,” he added.

However, the Sinners director said his “heart broke almost even more” after Wakanda Forever came out in November 2022 when he came to terms with the fact that Boseman would never star in any future films. “I realized all the work had been distracting me from the fact that Chad’s not going to make any more movies,” he added.

Nate Moore, a producer of both Black Panther films, previously opened up about how “hard” and “terrifying” it was to move forward with Wakanda Forever without Boseman — both personally and professionally — in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter.

“We were in prep on a movie with T’Challa as the centerpiece, and Chadwick’s passing was a surprise,” he said. “You’d have all the conversations you’d have when you lose anyone, right? ‘What do we do? How are we going to get through this?’ And we couldn’t get through it together. We couldn’t be in the same space and mourn him. We had all the conversations you’d expect to have. ‘Should we even make this movie?’”

“It felt weird to consider a movie without him because he was so much a part of that character,” he added, noting that Boseman’s influence on the film was insurmountable so “recasting also was never a consideration.”

“We would be doing anybody a disservice, frankly, to say, ‘Hey, stand in those shoes,’” More said. “You can’t stand in those shoes. Then it became a question of: How do you reconceive a movie but also keep the crew together?”