Time and again, Michael B. Jordan and Ryan Coogler have proved to be a winning duo—the actor and director are currently celebrating the runaway success of Black Panther, the third film they’ve made together. There’s no resting on laurels here, though, as Variety reports Coogler and Jordan are teaming up once more on the big screen. And this time, they’re bringing Ta-Nehisi Coates with them.
Coogler will direct Jordan in Wrong Answer, an upcoming drama about the Atlanta public school cheating scandal in 2006. Coates, who’s also reimagined Wakanda for the Black Panther comics, is writing the film. Wrong Answer will be based in part on a New Yorker article about the Atlanta teachers who were in an untenable situation—the No Child Left Behind Act that was passed in 2001 threatened to shut down the Parks Middle School based on standardized test scores with no consideration for testing bias. The school’s principal told journalist Rachel Aviv that his school district was “increasingly ‘corporate,’ with every school focused on the ‘bottom line,’’ putting additional pressure on teachers to pull up test scores despite there being no national standard. It’s just the kind of politically-charged source material that the actor, director, and writer have successfully adapted in the past, which bodes well for their first collaboration together.