Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1490572
concepts online, etc. As the team assembled, scripts were being distributed, things were moving, slowly, but moving, nonetheless. The process felt, at least, familiar. August 28, 2020, Chadwick Boseman passed away after a long battle with colon cancer. It was numbing. My first thoughts were of his family and friends. I thought about Ryan [Coogler] and how he was handling the loss of his close friend, someone he called Brother. Ryan stepped away to reflect and grieve his friend's passing. After some time, he decided Chadwick would want him, us, eveyone involved in the film to continue, to do the very thing we love, and that he loved, too. And that's what we did. The tone of the story very much shifted in purpose from what it was, our drive and strength to create an homage to Chadwick and a story of overcoming grief and loss heightened. We had something to say, a tribute to make to a great friend, human, husband, sibling, son, humanitarian and a hero to so many young kids across the world. Talokan Memory was the main design tenet of the new world, Talokan. Ryan Coogler, director of Wakanda Forever, and I started talking about a new underwater world for the second installment of Black Panther in December 2019. He talked about the people of the new world being direct descendants of the Maya of Yucatan, Mexico. He told me the story of how and why the Mayans, in our story, went into the ocean. We talked about who they were, what they wanted for themselves, their children, and community. It's like sitting around a campfire long ago and listening to stories about great civilizations from a griot. Ryan and I talked about all the possibilities for their technology, being organic, mechanical, etc., and where their civilization was located in the ocean. Ryan really wanted the world to employ as much hard sci-fi as possible, building upon known scientific principles. This required a lot of experts from all walks of life, in many disciplines—from Mexican archeologists A. MAYAN VILLAGE. SET PHOTO. B. MAYAN VILLAGE. LLUSTRATION BY VICKI PUI USING MODO AND PHOTOSHOP. A B