NEW DIRECTIONS

NIA DACOSTA, DIRECTOR AND COWRITER OF THE MARVELS, IS LESS CONCERNED ABOUT THE BARRIERS SHE'S BROKEN THAN THE WORLDS SHE'LL TAKE ON NEXT

- REBECCA FORD

BACK IN EARLY 2020, when Marvel was on the hunt for a director for The Marvels, a young director came in to pitch her vision for the project to executives and select talent. Four minutes into the meeting, Brie Larson sent an all-caps text to their mutual friend, Tessa Thompson. All it said was "NIA DACOSTA." 

DaCosta, who was 30 at the time, got the job, becoming not only Marvel's youngest director ever, but also the first Black woman to helm one of its films. "When I go into those rooms, I'm really just like, 'This is what I want,"" says DaCosta. "I'm not trying to figure out what they want, so I don't have those kinds of nerves." Her friend Thompson, who knows her way around the Marvel universe, having played Valkyrie in the Thor films, doesn't think DaCosta is giving herself quite enough credit: "She has this combination of real humility and also this idea of 'Why shouldn't I be able to do these things?' That belief in self-you need that, especially if you're in a position where people are inclined to underestimate you." 

When she signed on for The Marvels, DaCosta had released just one feature, an $11 million indie that was galaxies away from a superhero blockbuster. Now she would direct the sequel to Captain Marvel, which had made more than $1 billion globally, and her movie would have to be plotted and positioned carefully since it was tethered to the brand's other IP, both past and future. "We were just very impressed with her indie cred-and her nerd cred," says Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige.