Ryan Coogler

Biography

Ryan Kyle Coogler is an American filmmaker. He has received ten NAACP Image Awards and four Black Reel Awards. He has been nominated for two Academy Awards, a Golden Globe Award, and a Grammy Award. He made his feature-length debut with the independent film Fruitvale Station (2013), which won the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award for U.S. dramatic film at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival. It also won Best First Film at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival. Since then, he has co-written and directed films such as the Rocky series spinoff Creed (2015) and the Marvel film Black Panther (2018), the latter of which broke numerous box office records and became the highest-grossing film of all time by an African American director. Coogler also co-wrote and directed its sequel, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022) and wrote, co-produced, and directed the supernatural horror film Sinners (2025). All of Coogler's films have received widespread acclaim and commercial success. Critics have hailed his work for centring on often overlooked cultures and characters—most notably African Americans. He frequently collaborates with actor Michael B. Jordan and composer Ludwig Göransson, who have, respectively, appeared in and composed all of his films. In 2013, he was included on Time's list of the 30 people under 30 who are changing the world. In 2018, he was named the runner-up of Time's Person of the Year and was included in the annual Time 100 list of the most influential people in the world. In 2021, Coogler, his wife, Zinzi Coogler, and Sev Ohanian founded the multimedia production company Proximity Media; the first film it produced was Judas and the Black Messiah (2021).