Ryan Coogler Says ‘Black Panther 3’ is the Next Movie He’s Working On

Ryan Coogler says he is heading back to Wakanda — and soon. Coogler scored major box office hits with Black Panther and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. Speaking during a panel at Deadline’s Contenders Film: Los Angeles, the acclaimed director shared that he is already working on the next chapter in the Marvel saga. 

“If it was anybody but you, I would say, ‘I can neither confirm or deny,'” Coogler joked. “But we’re working on it hard… Yeah, it’s the next movie.”

Coogler’s Black Panther was a massive hit in 2018, earning raves for Coogler and Michael B. Jordan, while making a global icon out of star Chadwick Boseman. Boseman first played the role of the Black Panther (aka T’Challa) in 2016’s Captain America: Civil War, followed by the Black Panther feature film in 2018. He reprised the superhero role in 2018’s Avengers: Infinity War and 2019’s Avengers: Endgame.

Fans were heartbroken when Boseman died in 2020 at age 42 after a battle with colon cancer. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, also directed by Coogler, arrived in 2022 as a tribute to and send-off for the late Boseman, as co-stars Letitia Wright, Lupita N’yongo, Winston Duke, Angela Bassett and Danai Gurira carried the franchise forward. Coogler talked about how hard it had been to continue without Boseman. 

“I was at a point when I was like, ‘I’m walking away from this business,'” Coogler said in 2022. “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 sais that revisiting footage of himself with Boseman revived his passion for the fictional country of Wakanda and rewriting the Wakanda Forever script.

“I was poring over a lot of conversations that we had, towards what I realized was the end of his life,” Coogler continued. “I decided that it made more sense to keep going.”