Ryan Coogler & Michael B. Jordan’s Secret Vampire Movie Has Three Major Studios Interested

Sony, Warner Bros and Universal are all fighting for the rights to Ryan Coogler’s upcoming vampire movie with Creed and Black Panther star Michael B. Jordan. The star, whose breakout role was in Coogler’s Fruitvale Station, is set to headline the movie, which is expected to go into production in summer 2024. While Jordan directed Creed III last year, Coogler’s last movie was 2022’s Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. Coogler’s Proximity Media will produce, and the production should give Warner Bros., MGM, and Jordan a chance to figure out what’s going on in the world of Creed.

According to Deadline, who first reported on the movie’s bidding war, it’s aiming for a budget of around $90 million. The movie is also set for a major theatrical run, which more or less ices out streaming platforms that don’t embrace that release model. Per the Deadline story, the movie is intended as a major starring vehicle for Jordan.

News of the project first popped up last week, with the initial report simply being that the movie was a genre film based on a spec script from Coogler. It’s the first entirely new property Coogler has worked on since Fruitvale Station, although he did create the character of Adonis Creed out of whole cloth and built the world of Creed more or less on his own.

Proximity Media’s Zinzi Coogler and Sev Ohanian will produce along with Coogler, and Rebecca Cho will serve as an executive producer.

Deadline says that Warner Bros. currently has an edge, but that all three studios are still very much in play for the movie. They expect the auction to be resolved soon, so Coogler can take the movie into pre-production. In the meantime, he’s busy developing an X-Files spinoff show for Disney. The filmmaker has not totally dismissed the idea of a third Black Panther movie, but it doesn’t seem to be a priority for Coogler or Marvel right now.

The idea of Jordan and Coogler taking their franchise success and using it to make a movie based on an original property, using Jordan’s box office prowess to sell it, feels like a return to the pre-MCU days of big-name movie stars selling movies as much as the franchises they’re appearing in. If it succeeds, expect a bunch of similar imitators, since “everything is a franchise now” has been one of the most consistent critiques of modern Hollywood movies.