Earlier this year, Black Panther director Ryan Coogler was handcuffed and detained by police after bank employees thought he was committing a robbery. Per TMZ, the incident happened in January, when Coogler, 35, was at an Atlanta area Bank of America branch. He was wearing sunglasses and a COVID mask, and wrote his request on a withdrawal slip.
“I would like to withdraw $12,000 cash from my checking account. Please do the money count somewhere else. I’d like to be discreet,” the message allegedly read. The teller informed her boss she believed Coogler was attempting a robbery, and the director and two others who were waiting for him were detained.
“This situation should never have happened. However, Bank of America worked with me and addressed it to my satisfaction and we have moved on,” Coogler told TMZ once the news broke publicly. After the ordeal was over, Coogler apparently requested the badge numbers of all the involved officers.
Since rising to prominence in Hollywood, Coogler has been an outspoken critic of racist policing. In 2021, he co-produced Judas and the Black Messiah, a biopic about the FBI assassination of Fred Hampton in the late 1960s. He has also been involved with leading retail protests after the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson.
Coogler’s debut feature, Fruitvale Station, focused on a fatal incident of police brutality. It told the story of Oscar Grant, a young man killed by transit police in Oakland in 2009. “When I watched the footage, I couldn’t help but to see myself in Oscar. We’re the same age, from the same location, wearing the same kind of clothes, his friends looked like my friends,” he told The Atlantic. “I imagined: what would happen if I didn’t make it home to the people that I cared about.”
Coogler is currently filming Black Panther: Wakanda Forever in Atlanta, where a majority of Marvel production takes place.