“Kill your darlings.” That’s a piece of advice you’ll encounter if you spend any amount of time in creative circles. It means, basically, that you have to be prepared to cut your favorite piece of a work – a scene, a paragraph, what have you – to benefit the whole. And with early cuts of ‘Black Panther’ rumored to clock in near the four hour mark, director Ryan Coogler no doubt had plenty of darlings to kill.
Speaking to Empire, executive producer Nate Moore described a number of scenes that for one reason or another didn’t make the final cut. While some were easier to cut than others, there was one scene in particular that both Moore and Coogler fought tooth and nail to keep before finally realizing that it had to go. Moore summed it up thusly:
“So in the film it is more than hinted at that they’re a couple, but there is a scene directly after Killmonger takes the throne where you hear both characters articulate their point of view as to why they should or shouldn’t follow this man, and it’s one of the most well-acted scenes I’ve ever been a part of.”
“Unfortunately, it occurred at a point in the movie where audiences just wanted to get to the resolution and so it slowed down a part of the movie and we were afraid audiences were checking out. We were also afraid if we took it out we’re going to ruin this movie – “guys, we’re going to ruin this movie; let’s not take it out.” We didn’t take it out for three or four screenings and we finally took it out and I think Ryan and I were probably the last men on that beach saying don’t take it out.”
Helmed by ‘Creed’ director Ryan Coogler, ‘Black Panther’ marks the eighteenth installment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The film, which stars Chadwick Boseman, Michael B. Jordan, Lupita Nyong’o, Danai Gurira, Martin Freeman, Daniel Kaluuya, Letitia Wright, Winston Duke, Angela Bassett, Forest Whitaker, and Andy Serkis, is now playing in theaters.
