Black Panther director Ryan Coogler almost quit filmmaking after Chadwick Boseman’s death: “I’m walking away from this business”

Black Panther screenwriter and director Ryan Coogler nearly quit filmmaking after the demise of Chadwick Boseman. The actor died in back in August 2020 after a private battle with colon cancer.

According to Variety, in a new interview with Entertainment Weekly, the filmmaker shared that Boseman’s death led him to reconsider continuing his work in the entertainment industry. “I was at a point when I was like, I’m walking away from this business,” Coogler shared.

“I didn’t know if I could make another movie period [or] another ‘Black Panther’ movie, because it hurt a lot. I was like, ‘Man, how could I open myself up to feeling like this again?'” Coogler continued, “I was poring over a lot of our conversations that we had, towards what I realized was the end of his life…I decided that it made more sense to keep going.”

Coogler is currently gearing up with the follow-up Black Panther: Wakanda Forever which arrives in theaters November 11. The film sees the returning cast members Angela Bassett, Letitia Wright, Lupita Nyong’o, Danai Gurira and Winston Duke, as they confront the death of Boseman’s King T’Challa. “It’s my job as a filmmaker to do things that I have personal integrity with,” Coogler said.

“If I don’t believe in what I’m doing, I’m going to have a hard time getting other people to do their best work. For them to do their best work, they have to believe in it. At the end of the day, the choices we make have to feel truthful to me. When filmmakers make things that don’t feel truthful to them, you can feel it. And I will argue that those projects don’t have a shot at working.”

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