Meet Ryan Coogler - The Guy Who Directed Black Panther

Black Panther is currently tearing up the box office towering over $195 million since its release last Friday, February 16, 2018. What is so unique about this movie is its cultural significance. The movie has received a lot of praise and the one guy who made this fantastic experience possible is the movie director, Ryan Coogler.

Ryan Coogler

For the first time, we get to see a superhero movie that is dominated by blacks/African Americans (Chadwick Boseman, Danai Gurira, Lupita Nyong’o), black antagonists (Michael B. Jordan, Winston Duke), a black filmmaker, black screenwriters (Coogler and Joe Robert Cole, of American Crime Story), a black executive producer (Captain America: Civil War‘s Nate Moore) and an overwhelmingly black supporting cast and crew.

Marvel Studios' Black Panther - Official Trailer

Though Coogler made huge success working in the movie industry prior to Black Panther. He had a budget of $900,000 for his very first feature-length film Frutivale Station and the movie made $16million. He also budgeted $40 million for Creed and it ended up making $173million but his creativity and excellence shined more in Black Panther and this has catapulted the Oakland native to a whole new level and everyone wants to know who he is.

Ryan Coogler

We also learned that Marvel gave the 31-year-old Coogler over $200 million budget for Black Panther and in just 3 days of its release, it has already made over $195 million.

Black Panther is so captivating, moviegoers believe there will be a sequel.

A work of Art by a Black Panther fan @Cole featuring Adidas #futurecraft 4D

With this great success and Ryan Coogler is indisputably the highest paid African-American movie Director in Hollywood.

“I’m a fan myself. And I find … I’m honored, man, to be on a project that people care about this much,” the director says.​

Coogler was born in Oakland, California. He has two other brothers Noah and Keenan. He attended Saint Mary's College of California, on a football scholarship as a redshirt wide receiver his freshman semester intending to study chemistry. While he was there, his English professor, Rosemary Graham, advised him to pursue a career in screenwriting. He went on to further his education at USC School of Cinematic Art.

He is married to Zinzi Evans.

Ryan Coogler and wife Zinzi Evans

Black Panther is a 2018 American superhero movie based on the Marvel Comics character of the same name. It was produced by Marvel Studios and distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures. It is the eighteenth film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU).