by In the wake of Chadwick Boseman’s untimely death in August 2020, a top Marvel official spoke candidly about how Disney handled the trauma of losing their star actor.
T’Challa was more than just another Marvel superhero to a lot of people, and his passing has left many fans grieving.
In the end, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever was given the challenging task of carrying on the successful series while simultaneously paying tribute to Chadwick Boseman’s passing.
Fortunately, the movie was a success, with critics complimenting the “outstanding” manner it handled themes of loss and grief and the fact that the franchise continues to be one of the MCU’s greatest achievements. The road to the sequel, however, was anything from simple.
Nate Moore, a producer at Marvel, has recently explained how Disney handled the hurt.
Disney’s Response to the Death of Chadwick Boseman
Nate Moore, the Marvel Studios vice president of production and development, spoke candidly about the internal events that occurred as Disney digested Chadwick Boseman’s passing in a recent interview with Deadline.
When asked how long it took to adjust, Moore said it was a “multi-layered” process that started with shock and denial over the bad news.
Understanding the loss of Chadwick Boseman, who passed away at the age of 43, was challenging:
“There’s like… Pardon my French, but ‘Holy shit, what happened?’ And at first… I remember, literally, I was on the treadmill, and I got the call, and I was like, ‘Wait, what happened?’ And then we get on a phone call and your mind is processing it as an idea and not as an emotional experience.”
Moore, though, started to make sense of everything and questioned whether the actor’s battle with illness was “why X, and Y, and Z was happening.”
It is commonly known that Chadwick Boseman made an effort to keep his cancer diagnosis a secret, and not many people were aware of the actor’s condition.
Moore questioned whether or not “we [should] even this make this movie :” after the actor’s untimely demise.
“Then you start to think about all the, ‘Oh, maybe that’s why X, and Y, and Z was happening.’ And then you process it emotionally and go like, ‘What do we do now?’ Like, should we even make this movie?”
Moore sought to avoid “just going through the motions” and found it particularly difficult to deal with “the loss of not just your star, but a friend”:
“Like, how do you respond to the loss of not just your star, but a friend that you made, for me, two movies together with, and not feel like you’re just now going through the motions?”
Recasting, in the words of the Marvel executive, “never crossed [his] mind.” He remarked that he found it impossible to picture telling Leita Wright, Angela Basset, or any other cast member that they were “the new T’Challa:“
“The notion of recasting never crossed my mind… I couldn’t imagine saying to Letitia [Wright], or Angela [Bassett], or Lupita [Nyong’o], ‘Hey, here’s the new T’Challa,’ ’cause we are people, you know, who have to make something we believe in and emotionally can get behind.”
Even so, there were internal discussions concerning the franchise’s future. Moore stressed that Disney never insisted on making a Black Panther 2 sequel. There was no demand that “you have to make the movie, so figure it out.”
Disney argued that the sequel shouldn’t be created “on their account” instead. Nate Moore and Marvel Studios CEO Kevin Feige were in charge of selecting the appropriate course of action:
“I’ve said this and it’s true, Disney never said, You have to make the movie, so figure it out.’ They said, ‘Well, if you don’t have to… don’t make the movie. If you guys don’t wanna make the movie, please don’t make the movie on our account.”
Even in light of his sad absence, the two agreed after speaking with Boseman’s widow, Simone Boseman, that “Chad would’ve wanted us to make the movie.”
The topic of T’Challa’s absence from the upcoming Black Panther film was discussed, and Moore outlined how they decided to handle it in terms of the story:
“And how do you narratively then… If we didn’t want T’Challa in the movie, which we didn’t, how do you narratively then address that absence in a way that felt honest?”
T’Challa’s death in an off-screen action scene was an early theory, but it was dismissed as “crazy,” and Marvel opted not to “fight the reality of what we all experienced as a community.”
The MCU chose to be genuine in their approach. It “felt like the most genuine thing we could do as storytellers”according to Moore, to have T’Challa pass away from disease and utilise the anguish to “fuel [the film] in a way that hopefully respects the reality:”
“Yeah, because that was the only way that felt authentic and we knew we had a reaction to the passing. And clearly the world did, or at least his fans did. So it felt like the most genuine thing we could do as storytellers is use that a little bit as fuel in a way that hopefully respects the reality of the situation.”
Marvel “cleared everything with Simone” at each stage and wanted to make sure it complied with the intentions of Boseman’s family.
The MCU producer said that he wanted it to be “ultimately cathartic” and that he wanted to let the characters “grieve” what the viewers had to go through.
“We cleared everything with Simone at every step of the way, ’cause at no point did we wanna do something where the family said, ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa, don’t do that.’ But also allow the characters to grieve and experience the thing that the people experienced hopefully in a way that ultimately is cathartic.”
Why the Black Panther 2 Almost Didn’t Happen
The director of the two Black Panther movies, Ryan Coogler, too faced difficulties and nearly gave up on creating movies. Nate Moore was not the only one who battled.
The filmmaker was open and honest about his hardships after Chadwick Boseman’s death and how, in the end, he felt a huge obligation to carry on.
After thinking back on his chats with the deceased actor near the end of his life, he came to this understanding.
Despite Boseman’s desire for the series to continue without him, Coogler believed it made more sense to carry on with it without his buddy and leading man.
On February 1st, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever will debut on Disney+.
