Michael B. Jordan and Ryan Coogler's Next Round

Michael B. Jordan and Ryan Coogler just reclaimed the Rocky franchise for millennials. Now Hollywood wants to know what else they can do.

 

- Rembert Browne

There’s a moment you rarely catch famous people in—right after they blow up, but before they’re too big to remember what it’s like to be normal. It’s the morning of December 23, and nobody should want to be here in this Los Angeles event space talking to a reporter, least of all actor Michael B. Jordan and writer-director Ryan Coogler, both of whom must have better things to do on Christmas Eve eve. But neither seems unhappy; they’re relishing the attention and the opportunity to spend time with each other before the holidays, boyishly clowning around. When someone mentions lunch, Jordan raves about a nearby restaurant’s fried-chicken sandwiches as he shadowboxes in front of a mirror. A string of Mary J. Blige songs box-steps through the speakers, followed by Shanice’s “I Love Your Smile.” Coogler and Jordan compliment the playlist while dance-walking through the room.

In other words, it’s easy to forget that I’m talking to two of the hottest commodities in Hollywood, fresh off Creed, the new Rocky sequel directed and cowritten by Coogler and starring Jordan as boxer Adonis Creed (son of Apollo), which has grossed more than $100 million since its Thanksgiving-weekend opening, earned a Golden Globe nomination for Sylvester Stallone (who returns as Rocky Balboa, Adonis’s trainer), and revitalized a seemingly maxed-out franchise in a time when revitalizing maxed-out franchises might be the one skill the movie business values most. Things are changing fast for the pair, and their next projects will be whatever they want them to be. A week after our meeting, Coogler will make rumors true by signing up to direct Marvel’s Black Panther movie, and then he’ll be spotted at a performance of Hamilton, causing the internet to speculate, based on very little evidence, that he might make Hamilton: The Movie.