If you had to take a guess, how many studios would you say are desperate to greenlight a superhero film by a black director? One? Just a few? All of the majors? I cynically volleyed that question to coworkers in Slack last week when reports started circling that Spike Lee (Do the Right Thing, Malcolm X, She’s Gotta Have It) was in consideration to direct an adaptation of Nightwatch for Sony, possibly with a script from Luke Cage’s Cheo Hodari Coker. My colleagues debated the query gamely, but the discussion didn’t end with the possibility of Lee taking on a Marvel hero. One day later, there was a report that Ava DuVernay (A Wrinkle in Time, Selma) would be directing New Gods, a DC saga of virtue and immorality that takes place in a realm of immortal beings known as the Fourth World. I was starting to get answers.
There’s a renewed sense of excitement afoot in Hollywood, and much of it has to do with the singular and sweeping success of director Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther, which has ruled the box office for five consecutive weeks, grossing an astronomical $1.2 billion internationally in that very small window of time. Such cinematic sovereignty hasn’t been engineered since Avatar, James Cameron’s 2009 sci-fi epic of love and colonization. But Black Panther’s impact goes beyond the bottom line—it’s also beloved by critics and cinematic proof that a black director with an all-black, gender-balanced cast can captivate audiences. It’s a triumph that tests a complex thesis: that major studios will now entrust directors of color with mega-budgeted, franchise-worthy films. I like to think of it as the Ryan Coogler Effect.
I'm not the only one anticipating this shift. Emmy-winning writer and actress Lena Waithe recently told Vanity Fair that she believes there will now be two eras: Before Black Panther and After Black Panther. "These execs are all looking around and saying to themselves, ‘Shit, we want a Black Panther; we want a movie where motherfuckers come out in droves and see it multiple times and buy out movie theaters,’" she said. "And because we also live in a town of copycats, there are going to be a lot of bad black superhero movies coming because everybody ain’t Ryan Coogler!”
Even with black cultural production at an all-time high, there are forces working against this theory. Conspicuously troubled by its own conservatism, gender and racial inequity remain constants in Hollywood, a business that has always projected a mirage of liberal progression. The sexual misconduct allegations against Harvey Weinstein opened a wound that, for decades, festered in the dark corners of studio lots and executive suites. And in 2015, marketing executive and activist April Reign’s #OscarsSoWhite hashtag brought attention to the Academy’s cold indifference to qualified nonwhite nominees; it’s since become ground zero for conversations around cultural inclusion as they relate to so-called creative institutions. Superhero films hold a particular placement in the industry’s firmament, with regard to their flagrant regurgitation of anemic bravery on the silver screen. A survey of recent history furnishes a disproportionate amount of tales centered on white men who champion the greater good, from Marvel’s Avengers and X-Men to DC’s Justice League.
This epidemic is partially why Black Panther feels so urgent, so of the moment. Black people have long envisioned self-governing societies scrubbed of white affliction; think of Octavia Butler and Samuel R. Delany, those dazzling literary world builders. The difference, now, is sheer magnitude—reach and resonance. Going into week six, Black Panther is already the second highest-grossing domestic superhero film of all-time. Coogler’s retooling of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s classic has elevated the hero into a new pantheon—it’s become a cultural wellspring that gives and gives.
Unfair as it is to place the burden of progress on the film and Coogler alone, the real challenge will be the distillation of Black Panther’s success throughout an industry sick with statis. Looking at 2016’s top 100 films, a recent study by USC’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism found a chasm of inequality so offensively wide one wonders if it can ever be bridged. Of the report’s most shocking figures, it found that from 2007 to 2016 only 34 different women directors issued films; underrepresentation was all but unanimous among black, Asian, Hispanic, and LGBTQ actors in speaking roles, when compared to white actors.
So, can Black Panther open doors that should’ve been kicked down long ago? Is the Coogler Effect real? In small measure, it already looks to be producing dividends with superhero films from DuVernay and, potentially, Lee. It should be noted that New Gods marks DuVernay as the second woman to oversee a DC tentpole (following Patty Jenkins’ Wonder Woman), no small feat given the scarcity with which black women filmmakers are granted the opportunity to shepherd franchise films. There’s also the stellar Gina Prince-Bythewood (Love & Basketball, Beyond the Lights), who is set to direct Silver & Black, a Spider-Man spinoff for Sony that follows the twined adventures of Silver Sable and Black Cat. She and DuVernay are now among the first black women entrusted with studio-backed superhero epics. “Diversity isn’t just a fad,” cultural critic Ira Madison III wrote of DuVernay’s news, “it’s proving that it sells at the box office in spades and it’s also useful in getting fans to eagerly discuss franchise films in a time where superhero fatigue runs rampant.”
But superhero movies are typically reliable investments. The real test of Coogler’s ripple effect will be whether directors of color will be asked to helm Hollywood films outside the genre. “Maybe it won’t take long for studios to remember that and think, ‘OK, sure, we’ll hire a black guy to direct Ant Man 5,’” says The Ringer’s film critic K. Austin Collins. “But who’s going to give black directors huge sums of money to direct expensive Hollywood movies that aren’t superhero or franchise IP, and which aren’t guaranteed a profit? That, to me, is the real question: Not ‘Who’ll direct Black Panther 2?’ but, ‘Who’ll get the money to make another Malcolm X?’”
My conviction in Coogler’s effect is not without trepidation. As Madison pointed out, diversity, as far as Hollywood is presently concerned, is in vogue. It sells big. Lee, DuVernay, and Prince-Bythewood are filmmakers of startling talent, but is their attachment to those superhero movies a true one? Or are studio executives merely making a studied commercial push? If there’s doubt on my part, it rests in the flawed system and its ferris wheel of capitalist fetishes. The machinations of the film world are what they are—the provincial blur of commercialism is intoxicating if dangerous. There’s a proven formula, sure, but what have we lost by leaving others out? What stories could have been reshaped through new eyes? How can one enter the room and prove their merit if they’re never given the keys?
If the racial parameters of Hollywood films, superhero and otherwise, are truly going to expand, Collins believes we need to gamble somewhere else entirely. “For other races, it seems pretty clear that everyone’s gonna need a Wonder Woman or a Black Panther to open the door to huge projects of that scope, if that’s the goal,” he says. “What I’d really rather bet on are the movies like Star Wars, which are effortlessly diverse and making a case for new POCs, like John Boyega and Oscar Isaac, as movie stars. ‘Movie star’ is a phrase Hollywood still understands.”
- The inside story of Pong and Nolan Bushnell’s early days at Atari
- What does “self-care” mean amid the barrage of news and social media?
- The strange history of one of the Internet’s first viral videos
