Erik Killmonger
TRUE KING OF WAKANDA
‘Creed’ Director on Whether Marvel’s Black Panther Needs a Black Director
Screen Rant I know there’s been a lot of rumors about you and Marvel’s Black Panther. I don’t want to talk about that because you are focused on [Creed]. But do you think something like a Black Panther movie from Marvel has to have a black director? We’ve seen just like every prominent black director thrown in—Ava [DuVernay], you, anybody who’s had any kind of success in the last few years…
Ryan Coogler: Yeah, I think it’s important. Perspective is so important in art. It’s an important thing. That’s not to say that you can’t work outside yourself. When I was coming up, I made movies about things that were close to me; I made movies about things that weren’t close to me. But I definitely think that it helps when you are close to a subject. Like, I was an athlete for most of my life before I was a filmmaker. And that helped to inform me when writing this script, when directing. Having had those types of experiences helped me inform this process.
A lot of times with great movies, you find some part of the filmmaker’s life informing what they were doing. You look at Marty’s great movies. It’s like, man, you look at Mean Streets, that was his life. That was what he was dealing with. That was what he was coming up with.
Screen Rant I know there’s been a lot of rumors about you and Marvel’s Black Panther. I don’t want to talk about that because you are focused on [Creed]. But do you think something like a Black Panther movie from Marvel has to have a black director? We’ve seen just like every prominent black director thrown in—Ava [DuVernay], you, anybody who’s had any kind of success in the last few years…
Ryan Coogler: Yeah, I think it’s important. Perspective is so important in art. It’s an important thing. That’s not to say that you can’t work outside yourself. When I was coming up, I made movies about things that were close to me; I made movies about things that weren’t close to me. But I definitely think that it helps when you are close to a subject. Like, I was an athlete for most of my life before I was a filmmaker. And that helped to inform me when writing this script, when directing. Having had those types of experiences helped me inform this process.
A lot of times with great movies, you find some part of the filmmaker’s life informing what they were doing. You look at Marty’s great movies. It’s like, man, you look at Mean Streets, that was his life. That was what he was dealing with. That was what he was coming up with.
