Cannes Film Festival 2018: Black Panther director Ryan Coogler teases potential sequel with all-female cast

In the aftermath of Black Panther’s astronomic success, directer Ryan Coogler has revealed his desire to direct a female-led sequel to the movie during an interview with Variety at the 71st Cannes Film Festival. [caption id=“attachment_4355259” align=“alignnone” width=“825”]  A still from Black Panther. YouTube[/caption] Black Panther’s strong and complex women characters also became instant fan favourites with Lupita Nyongo as Nakia, Lelita Wright as Shuri and Danai Gurira as Okoye. While many critics praised the female-centric developments, arguably a lot more remains to be done to do justice to the characters. While the Black Panther fever began fading in the wake of Avengers: Infinity War , the fans got some more of culturally rich Wakanda which acted as a battle field in the Avengers movie. Speaking with moderator Elvis Mitchell, he talked about the part in the film where T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman) is assumed to be dead and the story revolves mainly around the female characters alone as they try to protect Wakanda. “That’s one of my favorite parts of the movie when I watched it, and I didn’t expect that” he said. When he was asked if the female characters of Black Panther were as important as the male characters, Coogler was quick to reply, “I think you could argue they are more important.” Currently, Marvel’s first female-led super hero movie, Captain Marvel, is in the pipeline and slated to release on 6 March, 2019. Also at Cannes, Coogler said The Godfather was a major influence on Black Panther but he was apprehensive about making that public.

In a talk at the Cannes Film Festival on Thursday, Coogler said he realised the story of Black Panther — about a young man ascending to a family throne — bore many similarities with Francis Ford Coppola’s masterpiece.

But Coogler did not want that inspiration divulged before the movie came out because he said he was worried that people would think he was “aiming too high” for a comic book film.

Black Panther became one of the year’s most acclaimed films and grossed more than $1.3 billion worldwide. With inputs from AP. (Also read — Cannes Film Festival 2018: Huma Qureshi on returning to gala and #MeToo movement in India)