How Ryan Coogler’s Proximity Media became Hollywood’s most innovative—and bankable—company

Usually, all-nighters are for college students and people worried about losing their jobs if they don’t deliver. And if there’s one thing that Ryan Coogler—writer, director, and producer of Sinners—has demonstrated over his career, it’s that he delivers. Yet on this February afternoon—a day before his blood-soaked Southern Gothic blockbuster would become the most Oscar-nominated project in cinema history—he’s sitting across from me in a knit monochrome tracksuit and thick-rimmed glasses, looking rather sleepy. “My bad, bro,” he tells me after briefly losing his train of thought in the middle of a sentence. “I just pulled an all-nighter trying to get a draft in.” The script is for an upcoming TV reboot of the hit 1990s series The X Files, which Ryan is coproducing for Disney+ through Proximity Media, the company he founded with his wife, producer Zinzi Coogler, and producer and screenwriter Sev Ohanian (no relation to Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian). I’m meeting with the three of them