AT 31, RYAN COOGLER ASCENDS TO THE TOP WITH ‘BLACK PANTHER’
Ryan Coogler was feeling overwhelmed by “Black Panther.”
It was only his third feature film and, at just 30-years-old, he was making it with Hollywood’s most powerful studio under enormous cultural expectations and with $200 million to get it right.
And he really didn’t want it to “suck” (his word).
The Oakland, California, native got into filmmaking almost on a lark when a creative writing professor at St. Mary’s College in Moraga, California, where he was attending on a football scholarship, suggested he look into screenwriting. He had thought he would play football and be a doctor,
