In a report published by Devin Faraci over at Birth.Movies.Death., it looks like Marvel Studios may have finally found a match for Black Panther.

Creed‘s Ryan Coogler has reportedly entered talks for the production, and given how *great* Creed was, this is a rather exciting choice.

Seriously, Creed will easily make its way into my Top Ten this year barring an end of the year surprise. Coogler’s current trajectory, an indie director (for Fruitvale Station) turned mid-ranged budget level success, provides a bit more reassurance of a steady hand than a number of directors who made the leap to mega-bucks franchises from the festival crowd. Such a move may have effectively ended Josh Trank’s career, and it really did Marc Webb no favors either. Coogler’s likely path to megastar director status somewhat reminds me of Christopher Nolan’s, who rode the Oscar nominated Memento over to Insomnia over to Batman Begins.

A great move by Marvel, especially after the Ava DuVernay talks fizzled. Hopefully Coogler and Marvel will gel in a way that’s satisfying to audiences and critics.

5 COMMENTS

  1. CREED is indeed a very good movie. Stallone, who emerges as a nuanced character actor with this film, deserves a Best Supporting Actor nomination.

  2. This actually kinda bums me out.
    He’s obviously a talented storyteller who’s been able to carve his own path so far.
    It’s a shame to see him sucked up by such a heavy handed studio.

    I don’t doubt for a second that a Coogler Black Panther would be a far better movie if it had zero input from Marvel Studios.

    That’s not to say Marvel hasn’t churned out some damn entertaining movies, just none that showcase the directors.

  3. Marvel tightened its grip on directors in the 3 years between THE AVENGERS and AGE OF ULTRON — as Joss Whedon learned the hard way. Not even Scorsese or the Coen Brothers would have any power on a Marvel set today.

    This Wired article explains that auteurs have no place in today’s franchise-crazy Hollywood. Paramount has patterned its Transformers team explicitly on the writers’ room of a TV series, with a showrunner and a “bible” explaining the characters and even the plot twists. Disney and Warner may not be that extreme, but they’re getting there.

    http://www.wired.com/2015/11/building-the-star-wars-universe/

  4. That’s a good piece George, thanks for cluing me into that.

    I’ll say this much about Marvel, they don’t make artful films and they certainly haven’t done anything with the same verve and vision as The Dark Knight trilogy. On the other hand, they also haven’t produced outright bombs like Green Lantern. I really dislike Iron Man 2, Thor: The Dark World, and Avengers: Age of Ultron, but those aren’t movies that I’d be actively embarrassed to watch either.

    On the other hand, that lack of narrative and visual ambition also just becomes deadly stale after awhile. I guess it just depends on if you prefer the risk or not, I certainly do. Marvel doesn’t seem to. With the former mindset sometimes you’ll get Skyfall and then other times you’ll get Spectre. Of course, I still think it’s only a matter of time before we see the first actively “rotten” Marvel studios production. All good things…

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