Ryan Coogler’s Net Worth, Biography, Career, Awards, Fact and Life Story

Ryan Coogler Net Worth: Ryan Coogler is an American director and screenwriter who has a net worth of $25 million. Coogler is probably most famous for writing and directing the movies “Fruitvale Station” (2013), “Creed” (2015), and “Black Panther” (2018). Ryan, who has also worked as a boom editor, sound editor, sound mixer, assistant cameraman, and grip, won 20+ awards for “Fruitvale Station,” which was his first feature film. He was also the executive producer for a 2014 ESPN “30 for 30” episode titled “The Day the Series Stopped,” and he produced the 2021 films “Space Jam: A New Legacy” (which he also wrote) and “Judas and the Black Messiah.” The Marvel movie “Black Panther” received an overwhelmingly positive critical and commercial response and ended up earning $700 million domestically and $1.4 billion worldwide (including the U.S.). As of this writing, “Black Panther” is the ninth highest-grossing movie in history. Coogler was featured on “Time” magazine’s “30 People Under 30 Changing the World” list in 2013, and he was the runner-up for “Time” Person of the Year in 2018; that year he was also included in the publication’s list of the world’s most influential people.

Early Life: Ryan Coogler was born Ryan Kyle Coogler on May 23, 1986, in Oakland, California. He grew up in Oakland and Richmond, California, with mother Joselyn (a community organizer), father Ira (a juvenile hall probation counselor), and brothers Keenan and Noah. Ryan enjoyed playing sports during his youth, excelling in football and track, and he attended Saint Mary’s College High School in Berkeley. Coogler earned a football scholarship to Saint Mary’s College of California, and when he took a creative writing class, his professor suggested that he learn screenwriting. The school ended its football program in early 2004, so Ryan transferred to Sacramento State (also on a scholarship), where he spent four years playing football, and earned a bachelor’s degree in finance while taking several film classes. He then attended the USC School of Cinematic Arts after being accepted into its three-year master’s program and directed four short films, including “Locks,” which received the Dana and Albert Broccoli Award for Filmmaking Excellence at the Tribeca Film Festival. Another short film, “Fig,” won the DGA Student Film Award and the HBO Short Film Competition, and the short “Gap” earned the Jack Nicholson Award for Achievement in Directing.

Career: “Fruitvale Station” premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2013, and the distribution rights were acquired by The Weinstein Company for approximately $2 million. The film starred Michael B. Jordan, who would become Coogler’s frequent collaborator, and went on to gross $17.4 million against a $900,000 budget. Ryan teamed up with the film’s star again for 2015’s “Creed,” a spin-off/sequel of the “Rocky” series, and it brought in $173.6 million at the box office. He later served as an executive producer on “Creed II,” though he did not direct the film. Coogler’s next film was the mega-hit “Black Panther,” which starred Jordan, Chadwick Boseman, Lupita Nyong’o, Danai Gurira, and Daniel Kaluuya. Ryan was the youngest person to direct a Marvel film, and he is set to direct “Black Panther II.” After Boseman tragically died of colon cancer in August 2020, Coogler released a heartfelt statement about the star, saying “I spent the last year preparing, imagining and writing words for him to say, that we weren’t destined to see. It leaves me broken knowing that I won’t be able to watch another close-up of him in the monitor again or walk up to him and ask for another take.” In February 2021, it was announced that Disney+ had signed a five-year deal with Ryan’s production company, Proximity Media, and that he would be developing a series set in the Kingdom of Wakanda. In 2021, the Coogler-produced film “Judas and the Black Messiah” earned several awards, and Ryan earned an Academy Award nomination for the movie.

Personal Life: Ryan married producer Zinzi Evans in 2016. Since the age of 21, Coogler has served as a counselor at San Francisco’s Juvenile Hall, working with incarcerated youths. He co-founded Blackout For Human Rights, “a network of concerned artists, activists, filmmakers, musicians and citizens who committed their energy and resources to immediately address the staggering level of human rights violations against fellow Americans throughout the United States.”

Awards and Nominations: In 2021, Ryan received an Academy Award nomination for Best Motion Picture of the Year for “Judas and the Black Messiah.” He has earned nine Black Reel Award nominations, winning Outstanding Director, Motion Picture and Outstanding Original or Adapted Screenplay, Motion Picture for “Creed” and Outstanding Director for “Black Panther.” Coogler was named Director of the Year at the 2018 CinemaCon Awards, and “Fruitvale Station” won the Un Certain Regard – Avenir Prize at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival and a Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival. He won NAACP Image Awards for Outstanding Directing in a Motion Picture and Outstanding Writing in a Motion Picture for “Black Panther” and “Creed,” and the Satellite Awards honored him with an Honorary Satellite Award in 2014 and an Auteur Award in 2019.

Ryan has also won awards from the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films (“Black Panther”), African-American Film Critics Association (“Creed” and “Black Panther”), All Def Movie Awards (“Creed”), Black Film Critics Circle Awards (“Black Panther” and “Fruitvale Station”), Dragon Awards (“Black Panther”), Film Independent Spirit Awards (“Fruitvale Station”), Gotham Awards (“Fruitvale Station”), National Board of Review (“Fruitvale Station”), and PGA Awards (“Fruitvale Station”).

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Robert Redford’s Net Worth, Biography, Career, Awards, Fact and Life Story

Robert Redford Net Worth and Salary: Robert Redford is an American actor, director, producer, environmentalist, who has a net worth of $200 million. He is best known for the films “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid”, “The Sting”, “The Candidate”, and “Ordinary People”, as well as for being the founder of the Sundance Film Festival.Early Life: Charles Robert Redford Jr., better known as Robert Redford, was born in Santa Monica, California, on August 18, 1936. His parents were Martha Hart and Charles Robert Redford Sr., an accountant. He has a stepbrother from his father’s first marriage. His family moved to Van Nuys, Los Angeles, where he attended Van Nuys High School. After graduating in 1954, Redford continued his education at the University of Colorado Boulder, before dropping out after only a year and a half. The reason he left school was because he had begun to drink heavily and as a result lost his scholarship. He then spent time traveling around Europe, before relocating to New York City, where he took classes at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and also took painting lessons at the Pratt Institute.Career: Redford started out his acting career in New York City, working in various theater and television roles. He made his Broadway debut as a member of the cast in a 1959 production of “Tall Story”, followed by small parts in productions of “The Highest Tree” (1959) and “Sunday in New York” (1961). His most successful Broadway appearance was as the husband of Elizabeth Ashley in the original cast of “Barefoot in the Park” (1963) by Neil Simon.Starting in 1960, Redford also simultaneously began appearing as a guest star in television shows like “Maverick” (1960), “Perry Mason” (1960), “Naked City” (1961), “Whispering Smith” (1961), “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” (1961), “The Twilight Zone” (1962), and “The Untouchables” (1963), among many others. For his performance in “The Voice of Charlie Pont” (1962), Redford received an Emmy nomination for Best Supporting Actor. After 1963, when he appeared on the ABC medical drama “Breaking Point”, Redford did not appear on television until 2019. While he did not actually appear on the show, his likeness and archival audio of his voice was used on the HBO drama “Watchmen”, as a fictionalized version of himself in an alternate universe.Also in 1960, the same year he began appearing on television, Redford made his big screen debut in a minor role in the film “Tall Story”. As he started making a name for himself on Broadway and in television, Redford began landing larger movie roles. He got his second film role in 1962, in the film “War Hunt”, followed by the films “Situation Hopeless…But Not Serious” (1965) and “Inside Daisy Clover” (1965). Other films he appeared in during the 1960s include “This Property Is Condemned” (1966), “The Chase” (1966), “Barefoot in the Park” (1967), “Downhill Racer” (1969), and “Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here” (1969). Perhaps one of his best known films from this period though is George Roy Hill’s “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” (1969), which was a huge success and helped to really cement Redford’s status as a box office draw and highly bankable Hollywood star. For his role in “Butch Cassidy”, he won a British Academy of Film and Television Award (BAFTA).1973 kicked off a huge four-year hot streak of box office successes for Redford. His film “The Way We Were” (1973) was the No. 11 highest-grossing film of 1973, and “The Sting” (1973) was the No. 1 highest-grossing film of 1974. “The Sting” also earned Redford his one and only nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor. He followed this with popular hits like “The Great Gatsby” (1974), “The Great Waldo Pepper” (1975), “Three Days of the Condor” (1975), and “All the President’s Men” (1976). Between 1974 and 1976, Redford was voted as Hollywood’s top box-office star by movie exhibitors, and in the years 1975, 1977, and 1978, he won the Golden Globe for Favourite World Film Star (this is an award based on popularity that is no longer given out). In addition to his acting career, Redford has also worked as a director. “Ordinary People” (1980) is perhaps his best known and most successful films as a director. It won four different Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director.Some of the awards Redford has won throughout his long and distinguished career include the National Medal of Arts in 1996, an Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2002, the Kennedy Center Honors in 2005, and a Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2016, to name just a few.Sundance Institute: Using the financial proceeds of his acting career, Redford bought an entire skit area on the east side of Mount Timpanogos, which is northeast of Provo, Utah, and renamed it as “Sundance”. The head of Redford’s company Wildwood Enterprises, Inc., Sterling Van Wagenen, partnered with John Earle of the Utah Film Commission to start the Utah/US Film Festival (what later became known as the Sundance Film Festival) in 1978. Their goal was to showcase American-made films, promote more independent films, and highlight the work of regional filmmakers working outside of Hollywood. Redford is not only credited as a founder of the nonprofit Sundance Institute and Sundance Cinemas, but also the Sundance Channel and Sundance Productions.Personal Life: Redford married Lola Van Wagenen in August 1958, in Las Vegas, Nevada. They had four children together, before ultimately divorcing in 1985. In July 2009, Redford got married to his longtime partner Sibylle Szaggars, in Hamburg, Germany.
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