Composer Ludwig Göransson On The “Labor Of Love” Cementing Chadwick Boseman’s Legacy With ‘Black Panther: Wakanda Forever’ – Sound & Screen

The loss of Chadwick Boseman was felt by creatives working on both sides of the camera including Ludwig Göransson, the Oscar-winning Black Panther composer tasked with bringing Disney and Marvel’s sequel, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, to life musically following Boseman’s tragic death.

“It was a very difficult project because of what happened,” Göransson said during a virtual panel conversation at Deadline’s Sound & Screen awards-season event. “Obviously in the first movie, so many themes and so many sounds are tied to Chad and to T’Challa. So how do we go back in doing a sequel when he’s not in it? Can I use the themes? Can I use the sounds? Everything has so much meaning to it. So it was very important heading into the [sequel], whenever we use any of the sounds from the theme from the first [movie] they are really thought out and that we put attention into the detail because of all the emotions that it would bring. It really had to feel right.”

An important element of the sequel was to honor Boseman’s life, and it does so by cementing his legacy as T’Challa both in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and what he means to people all over the world. It’s a task Göransson calls a “labor of love.”

Wakanda Forever also sets up the future of the MCU featuring new characters like Namor (Tenoch Huerta) and the Talokans, which have origins tied to the Mayan culture, of which not much remains historically. It was important to Göransson that he be as authentic as possible, so he enlisted help of professionals who had some of the pieces of the Mayan puzzle the movie desperately needed.

“Mayan music and the culture was forcibly erased, so we don’t know exactly what that music sounded like,” Göransson said. “The first thing I did