Ryan Coogler is an American filmmaker and screenwriter. He is best known as the writer and director of the 2013 film “Fruitvale Station,” the 2015 film “Creed,” and the 2018 film “Black Panther.”
Ryan Coogler was born in Oakland, California on May 23, 1986, as Ryan Kyle Coogler. With his mother Joselyn (a community organizer), father Ira (a juvenile hall probation counselor), and brothers Keenan and Noah, he grew up in Oakland and Richmond, California. Ryan attended Berkeley’s Saint Mary’s College High School, where he excelled in football and track.
Coogler attended Saint Mary’s College of California on a football scholarship, and when he took a creative writing course, his professor suggested that he study screenwriting.
Ryan transferred to Sacramento State (also on a scholarship), where he played football for four years and earned a bachelor’s degree in finance while taking several film classes after the school discontinued its football program in early 2004.
After being accepted into its three-year master’s program, he attended the USC School of Cinematic Arts and directed four short films, including “Locks,” which won the Dana and Albert Broccoli Award for Filmmaking Excellence at the Tribeca Film Festival. “Fig” won the DGA Student Film Award and the HBO Short Film Competition, and “Gap” won the Jack Nicholson Award for Excellence in Directing.
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In January 2013, “Fruitvale Station” premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, and The Weinstein Company paid approximately $2 million for the distribution rights.
Michael B. Jordan, who would become Coogler’s frequent collaborator, starred in the film, which grossed $17.4 million on a $900,000 budget. 2015’s “Creed,” a spin-off/sequel of the “Rocky” series, reunited Ryan with the film’s star and grossed $173,6 million at the box office. However, he did not direct “Creed II.”
The next film directed by Ryan Coogler was the blockbuster “Black Panther,” starring Michael B. Jordan, Chadwick Boseman, Lupita Nyong’o, Danai Gurira, and Daniel Kaluuya. Ryan is set to direct “Black Panther II”; he was the youngest person to direct a Marvel film.
In August 2020, following Boseman’s untimely death from colon cancer, Coogler released a heartfelt statement about the actor, in which he expressed: “I have spent the past year preparing, imagining, and writing words for him to say that we were never meant to hear. It breaks my heart to know that I will no longer be able to watch another close-up of him on the monitor or approach him to request another take.”
In February 2021, it was announced that Disney+ had signed a five-year deal with Ryan’s production company, Proximity Media and that he would be developing a Wakanda-based series. The Coogler-produced film “Judas and the Black Messiah” won multiple awards in 2021, and Ryan was nominated for an Academy Award for the film.
Ryan married producer Zinzi Evans in 2016. Since the age of 21, Coogler has worked as a counselor with incarcerated youth at San Francisco’s Juvenile Hall.
He co-founded Blackout For Human Rights, “a network of concerned artists, activists, filmmakers, musicians, and citizens who committed their energy and resources to immediately address the staggering number of human rights violations committed against fellow Americans across the United States.”
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According to celebritynetworth.com, American director and screenwriter Ryan Coogler have a net worth of $25 million. Coogler is most recognized for writing and directing the films “Fruitvale Station” (2013), “Creed” (2015), and “Black Panther” (2018).
Ryan, who has also worked as a boom editor, sound editor, sound mixer, assistant cameraman, and grip, won over twenty awards for his debut feature film, “Fruitvale Station.”
In addition, he served as executive producer for the 2014 ESPN “30 for 30” episode “The Day the Series Stopped” and produced the 2021 films “Space Jam: A New Legacy” (which he also wrote) and “Judas and the Black Messiah.”
The Marvel film “Black Panther” received a resoundingly positive critical and commercial reception, ultimately grossing $700 million domestically and $1.4 billion internationally (including the U.S.). “Black Panther” is currently the ninth highest-grossing film in history.
Coogler appeared on “Time” magazine’s “30 People Under 30 Changing the World” list in 2013, and he was the runner-up for “Time” Person of the Year in 2018; he was also included on the publication’s list of the world’s most influential people that year.
“Judas and the Black Messiah” earned Ryan an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture of the Year in 2021. He has been nominated for nine Black Reel Awards, winning Outstanding Director, Motion Picture for “Creed” and Outstanding Original or Adapted Screenplay, Motion Picture for “Black Panther.”
Coogler was named Director of the Year at the 2018 CinemaCon Awards, and “Fruitvale Station” was awarded the Un Certain Regard – Avenir Prize at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival as well as the Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival.
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“Black Panther” and “Creed” earned him NAACP Image Awards for Outstanding Directing in a Motion Picture and Outstanding Writing in a Motion Picture, and the Satellite Awards presented him with an Honorary Satellite Award in 2014 and an Auteur Award in 2019.
Ryan has also received accolades from the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films (“Black Panther”), the African-American Film Critics Association (“Creed” and “Black Panther”), the All Def Movie Awards (“Creed”), the Black Film Critics Circle Awards (“Black Panther” and “Fruitvale Station”), the Dragon Awards (“Black Panther”), the Film Independent Spirit Awards (“Fruitvale Station”), the Gotham Awards (“Fruitvale (“Fruitvale Station”).