Ryan Coogler Pens Moving Essay For Ava DuVernay

Premiere Of Disney's 'A Wrinkle In Time' - Arrivals

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Ava DuVernay‘s A Wrinkle In Time debuted Friday (Mar. 9) as another highly-anticipated film after Marvel’s Black Panther, and the latter movie’s director penned a moving tribute to his colleague. Via ESPN, Ryan Coogler hailed DuVernay as a “pioneer” and lovingly referred to her as his “big sister.”

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From ESPN:

In her life before I met her, she was a highly admired Hollywood publicist who owned her own company. By then she had written, produced and directed two amazing films, about black women finding hope while experiencing grief and loss, all while maintaining a production and distribution company to finance and distribute underserved independent films made by women and people of color. She was already one of my heroes, and that was before she took one of the most sought-after scripts in Hollywood and turned it into the best film about Dr. Martin Luther King that anyone will ever make.

Ava is a pioneer. She makes the most distant dreams and ideas a reality. She made a show called “Queen Sugar” and mandated the use of female directors and key creatives a full two years before the great Frances McDormand shared with the world what an inclusion rider was. Ava is inclusion, equity and representation.

It is a beautiful piece of writing, continuing with Coogler praising DuVernay’s work on A Wrinkle In Time while across the Disney studio halls from him as he worked on Black Panther.

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