In This Is Just Freaking Perfect news, Netflix and Marvel announced today that Cheo Hodari Coker will be Executive Producer and showrunner of their upcoming show Luke Cage, scheduled to premiere in 2016.
It’s awesome that this show about a black male hero is going to be helmed by… a black man! That shouldn’t be as huge of a novelty as it is… but it is—especially considering that minorities are still underrepresented in TV writing rooms compared to actual percentage of the US population. Come to think of it, I think the character of Luke Cage has only ever been written by one other black writer in a sea of white ones (correct me if I’m wrong, comics fans!), so this choice makes me happy. Especially since this Luke Cage will be the one that most people get to know. This is the one that will be in the pop culture consciousness, so it’s important that whoever’s at the helm of this show can present the character—who yes, has a history going back to “Blaxploitation” films—in a way that isn’t exploitative.
And Hodari Coker has an insanely amazing pedigree. He was a Co-Executive Producer on Ray Donovan, and a Supervising Producer on SouthLAnd, which earned a 2012 Peabody Award when he was on the writing team. Hodari Coker has also won a 2013 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Writing for a Dramatic Series for SouthLAnd.
In addition:
Coker’s feature film credits include Fox Searchlight’s rap biopic Notorious. He authored the book Unbelievable: The Life, Death, and Afterlife of The Notorious B.I.G. as well. Coker started his writing career in journalism and was a staff writer at the Los Angeles Times and contributed to VIBE, Rolling Stone, and Essence, among other publications. He is a graduate of Stanford University.
Great choice, Marvel! I was already looking forward to this show, and now I have even more faith that it’s gonna be awesome!
(via Marvel.com)
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