Ryan Coogler's 'Black Panther: Wakanda Forever' Pitch Left Martin Freeman Confused, But Seemingly In A Good Way

The world is intensely curious about Marvel Studios' Black Panther: Wakanda Forever for many reasons, chief among them to find out what kind of story writer/director Ryan Coogler is going to tell without the franchise's lead actor after Chadwick Boseman's death. And it sounds like some of his storytelling decisions threw one of the sequel's supporting actors for a bit of a loop.

Martin Freeman will be returning to the Marvel Cinematic Universe to reprise his role as Agent Everett K. Ross, and during a recent interview, he revealed that when Coogler walked him through the beats of the movie, he found some of the film's beats to be "very odd." 

On an appearance during last night's The Late Late Show with James Corden (via ScreenRant), Freeman was asked if he could reveal anything about the upcoming movie.

"I had a Zoom call with Ryan Coogler, the director and co-writer, about seven or eight weeks ago, I suppose, and he sort of meticulously took me through all of my character's beats in the film," Freeman replied. "He took me through the film, but incorporating my character's beats. And some of it was really [laughs], some of it was, like, very odd. And I think he could see by the reaction on my face, some of the things he was saying...He kept sort of stopping and going, 'I can see where–', he kept on saying, 'Stay with me, but this is going to work.'"

That indicates Coogler is taking big swings with this sequel, which is exciting for anyone who is a little bummed to see him get roped back into the Marvel machine again. If he's spending so much time at this prime stage of his career working in the MCU, at least it sounds like we'll be seeing something unexpected and creative come of it.

"When Chadwick passed last year, and after the initial shock of that – it was just an appalling thing to find out – the next thing was, 'Okay, so I guess we're not doing – that film won't or can't happen again'," Freeman said later in the interview. "So Marvel came to us reasonably shortly afterwards and said, 'Obviously this is a dreadful thing, but we're going to go on.' So that was the plan from a while ago. Obviously the hope is that we do the first film justice and we do Chadwick's legacy on it justice and we make a good film."

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is set to arrive on July 8, 2022.