by Nathaniel R
Photographed by Kayla Reefer for The New York TimesAny list of the newest generation of exciting movie stars would have to include Michael Bakari Jordan (aka Michael B Jordan), and presumably way up top. The Jersey-raised actor, started young on television as a teen actor with acclaimed work on The Wire. With a name so reminiscent of a superstar in another field, it felt like a dare; How could he be that big for the movies? When he hit his mid 20s, though, the movies came calling to make good on the pop culture connotations of that name. It's been a match made in heaven thus far.
All that said he's been strangely absent from our movie screens since proving his film-carrying charisma so thoroughly with the one-two punch of Fruitvale Station and Creed. But then came 2018 to prove to us that he'd been hard at work all along but movies have their own temperamental calendars and sometimes they all get bunched up together. Four movies arrived in quick succession, one of them likely to be the biggest hit he'll ever have. He's already an Emmy nominee for producing the TV movie Fahrenheit 451 earlier this year, but the Oscar nomination has to date eluded him. Will that change with the Black Panther campaign? We don't yet know though we definitely hope so since it's his second, not his first, nomination worthy role; Oscar was sleeping on that whole Creed success back in 2015, a movie that was wildly better than it had any right to be given its provenance.
How many of his Michael B Jordan's key movies and TV shows have you seen? The posters are after the jump.
Chapter 1 - Promising Actor
HARDBALL (2001)
THE WIRE Season 1 (2002)
BLACKOUT (2007)
PASTOR BROWN (2009)
FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS Season 4 and 5 (2009-2011)
PARENTHOOD Season 3 (2011)
Chapter 2 -Young Leading Man, Rising Star.
RED TAILS (2012)
CHRONICLE (2012)
FRUITVALE STATION (2013)
THAT AWKWARD MOMENT (2014)
THE FANTASTIC FOUR (2015)
CREED (2015)
KIN (2018)
FAHRENHEIT 451 (2018)
BLACK PANTHER (2018)
Chapter 3 - Movie Star
CREED II (2018)
Just a guess but you're unlikely to see movie posters from this point forward that don't feature his name or face prominently. At 31 years of age with multiple hits under his belt and critical acclaim (and maybe even an Oscar nomination soon) he's likely to have a tremendous decade in the 2020s... Stay tuned.