UPDATE: The movie is moving forward with Ta-Nehisi Coates aboard to write the script and Plan B producing the movie for New Regency. This will mark just the latest collaboration for Jordan and Coogler, following their work on Marvel's Black Panther
Ryan Coogler and Michael B. Jordan worked together brilliantly as director and star on Fruitvale Station and all signs are positive for their latest collaboration, Creed. Now the pair is looking to keep the films coming, teaming back up for school cheating scandal drama **Wrong Answer.
In a report on Creed in The New York Times, Jordan drops mention of the project, which will see him playing an Atlanta high school teacher caught up in the city’s test score scandal in 2013.
The scandal sent ripples through the education community when a number of officials, including five teachers and a headmaster, were found to have cheated to help students score better grades on the state-wide Criterion-Referenced Competency Test, the case about which has since seen 11 of the 12 educators involved convicted of racketeering and facing sentences of up to 20 years in prison.
“I’m just trying to shine lights on little situations that I feel are the problem, and telling it through art. I think that’s my part. To have people receive something that inspires thought, and conversation, and maybe you can change the way someone thinks. I think that’s where it starts,” Jordan tells the Times. “If you can change the way you think, the way you receive somebody, and not be intimidated by the way they look, or the color of their skin, or what they have on, it’s a step.”
To that end, he’ll also be playing real-life lawyer Bryan Stevenson, who fought for the rights of the poor. Creed, meanwhile, will be out here on January 15.