3 Great Movie Reboots Only Ryan Coogler Can Direct

With just five films under his belt, Ryan Coogler has proven himself to be one of the best directors working today. He started with the low-budget drama Fruitvale Station in 2013, which earned almost 20 times its budget and received phenomenal reviews. Then he moved into pre-existing IP territory with Creed, and in doing so gave the Rocky franchise what is undoubtedly its second-best entry. In 2018, he kicked off the Black Panther franchise, which gave the Marvel Cinematic Universe its first Best Picture nomination and the superhero genre as a whole. With Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, he showed that he could even take a movie that was troubled by behind-the-scenes tragedy and turn it not only into a box office hit, but a critically praised and moving box office hit, to boot.

Now, we have Sinners, Coogler’s first original high-budget film. Will it become profitable? The chances are looking pretty great, especially when factoring in its near-perfect score on Rotten Tomatoes. So, if he can inject fresh life into the well-worn vampire subgenre and make a critical and commercial success of it, what other films of years past could he revive with his own, personal, artful spin?

Spider-Man (Live-Action Miles Morales)

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse are widely, and rightly, deemed two of the best animated films of the past decade. From the animation to the casting, everything works.

And, while we still have Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse on the horizon, it’s not at all too early to bring Miles Morales’ Spider-Man and Hailee Steinfeld’s Spider-Gwen over to live-action land. After all, Nicolas Cage will be reprising his Into the Spider-Verse role of Spider-Man Noir in the upcoming Spider-Noir TV series. The key here is to once more retain the cast members from the pair of animated films. Shameik Moore is too good in the role of Morales to be replaced, and when it comes to getting Coogler on board, it would reteam him with Steinfeld after Sinners.

[RELATED: Spider-Noir‘s Lamorne Morris Says Spider-Man Spinoff Is “Insane” (Exclusive)]

In the Heat of the Night

John Ball’s 1965 mystery novel In the Heat of the Night is a breezy read that was subsequently turned into a similarly breezy watch. Both works also happened to be quite important in featuring a Black protagonist facing not only a tough murder investigation but bigotry, as well. The film paired Sidney Poitier and Rod Steiger and proved successful enough to lead to a long-running television series (with Howard Rollins and Carroll O’Connor). It was also a major critical success, winning Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Actor for Rod Steiger at the Academy Awards. Ridiculously enough, Poitier wasn’t even nominated. Make no mistake, he should have been.

But, Poitier still got a franchise out of it, as he returned for the sequels, They Call Me Mister Tibbs! (1970) and The Organization (1971). Oddly, neither film was based on any of the other Tibbs-led novels Ball wrote, including The Cool Cottontail, Johnny Get Your Gun, Five Pieces of Jade, The Eyes of Buddha, Then Came Violence, and Singapore. The themes present at the heart of In the Heat of the Night and, to a lesser extent, its sequel novels, are unfortunately as relevant today as they were in the ’60s, so Coogler would have a lot of free space to work with.

Blade (With Wesley Snipes)

Here we are again in caveat-equipped Marvel territory. The official MCU introduction of Blade, played by Mahershala Ali, very much looks like it will never see the light of day. Ali’s name has been attached to the project ever since he first entered discussions in 2019, and, outside a brief voice-only cameo in Eternals, he’s yet to become a part of the universe. The project has gone through several directors, so it’s not as if Coogler couldn’t take the reins (if anything would get it back on track, it would be Coogler’s involvement), but he’d actually be just as solid a choice for a legacy sequel featuring Wesley Snipes as the title character.

For one, Snipes’ appearance in Deadpool & Wolverine elicited one of the biggest reactions (at least in the screenings we attended) of the entire film. Two, Coogler has proven that he can make a Black superhero movie both incredibly financially successful and a favorite with critics and fans. Third, Sinners is a vampire movie. Combine Coogler’s second and third movies (Black Panther and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever) with his third (Sinners), and what do you get? Blade. Be it an Ali version or a Snipes version, Marvel would do well to see if Coogler has any interest in the daywalker. After all, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever could easily have been indefinitely shelved after the passing of Chadwick Boseman, but Coogler was able to turn the project around, keep it on track, and make something beautiful. If he could do that with Black Panther, he can do the same with Blade.

Sinners is in theaters. Read our review here.