The only actor who turned down a pitch from Ryan Coogler: “It didn’t come together”
For years now, Hollywood has been busy trying to produce as many sequels as possible.
It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to understand why; they’re a relatively safe bet, they remind people of easier, sometimes better times gone by, and you don’t need to pay writers to come up with new characters or a premise. Sometimes, they’re very good, like Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, directed by Ryan Coogler. Other times, most of the time in fact, they are not.
The suggestion that there are fewer good ideas for mainstream movies these days, or not as many workable scripts, simply isn’t true. When great films slip through the net, as they did on two occasions in 2025 with Zach Cregger’s Weapons and Coogler’s record-setting Oscar-winner Sinners, they make going to the cinema worthwhile again; fiercely inventive slices of escapism that push the medium forward and get folk excited about what each director might come up with next.
In each case, what they are doing, possibly due to the restraints or the demands of the industry they work in, is either to look backwards or to make a sequel. Cregger is doing a reboot of Resident Evil, a massive video game IP that already contains some 11 different movie adaptations, while Coogler will bring out Black Panther 3 once the enormous Avengers movies have been and gone over the next year and a half.
That’s not to say that each man won’t make something great out of them, but it’s a bit of shame that Coogler made Sinners but then had to head back to Wakanda rather than allow his imagination and talent to run riot with something entirely new. But it seems his love for the movies he grew up with was motivating him even before he got the chance to direct his first Marvel movie, specifically an Eddie Murphy comedy classic from 1988.
Coming to America was the John Landis-directed smash hit about a fictional African prince arriving in New York City to find a bride, which came as Murphy was arguably at his absolute peak, having had several hits in a row with Trading Places, two 48 Hours movies and three Beverley Hills Cops. He was also one of the world’s most in-demand stand-up comics and a former SNL star worth close to $100million, all before turning 28.
Landis and Murphy clashed badly on the set, the director believing fame and money had gone to the young actor’s head, describing him as a pig, but that didn’t stop the film earning $300million at the box office against a spend of just $36m. With numbers like those, a sequel was expected, but although a spin-off TV series was briefly in the works, neither came to pass.
Murphy told The New York Times a few years back: “We never thought about doing a sequel. The way the story ended was kind of like, ‘And they lived happily ever after.’ Then all this time passed, and the movie became this cult thing. Catchphrases from the movie start working their way into the culture.”
Coogler, who had just had his own first big hit with the Rocky spin-off Creed, but had yet to direct the first Black Panther, was someone who wanted to be involved, with Murphy adding, “I meet with him, and he says, ‘I want to do a Coming to America sequel.’ He had an idea for Michael B Jordan to play my son, and he would be looking for a wife. I was like, then the movie would be about the son, it’s not our characters, we already did that. It didn’t come together.”
Five years later, under the Dolomite is my Name director Craig Brewer, who had been a late career hit for Murphy, a sequel did happen, 2021’s Coming 2 America. Reuniting many of the original cast members, it was released at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic and suffered as a result, although it did become the most-streamed original title on Prime Video. Reviews were mixed, but some critics enjoyed Murphy’s performance.
