Ryan Coogler managed to anger a decent swath of film studio business affairs executives in recent weeks. This is usually a good sign for talent, at least in the short term. It means he got something the studios don’t ever give.
If you missed it, the Black Panther and Creed filmmaker has been shopping a project with Michael B. Jordan, his frequent collaborator. It’s a period genre film, supposedly with vampires, or the undead, or something, and I’m told Jordan will play twins—similar to what Tom Hardy did in that 2015 movie Legend. With the help of Coogler’s and Jordan’s publicists, the trades hyped this as one of those “hot packages” that sparked a “bidding frenzy.” On Wednesday, Warner Bros. landed the project for a little over $75 million.
