Joe Robert Cole is an American Screenwriter who formed part of Marvel's two-year in-house writing program where he would ultimately be given the opportunity to develop the story for the film, *Black Panther *, along with Ryan Coogler. ^{[0] [2] [3]}

Cole was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area and moved around a lot as a kid. ^{[-1] [12]}Growing up as an only child, he would often pretend to be every hero from every movie and TV show he saw as a kid. ^[12]

Moving around as a kid prepared him to be a storyteller, to make up stories, and

pretend to be every hero from every movie and TV show.

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He also read a lot of Comic books growing up and one of the things that he enjoyed doing was changing the names of comic book heroes to suit his taste. Instead of James Bond, he was James Black. Instead of Batman, he was Blackman. ^[12]

After graduating high school, he committed to the University of California, Berkeley. While there, he re-discovered his interest in writing stories and Screenplays and developed his talent in several areas of storytelling. ^{[12] [2]}

After college, during this period in the late 2010s he moved to Los Angeles, California where he developed his talent as a storyteller and writer. Initially, after graduating college, he seized the opportunity to be the screenwriter for the film, *ATL *. ^{[12] [2]}For the next several years, he would continue to work as a screenwriter and producer where he developed dozens of stories. ^[0]

He wrote and directed the film Amber Lake where he would meet his future wife, Polly Cusumano.

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In television, Cole wrote two episodes for the show, *American Crime Story * and

co-produced all 10 episodes.

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After writing a neo-noir spec screenplay to the likes of *CHINATOWN (1974) *,

executives at Marvel Studios got a hold of it and contacted Cole for a meeting. ^[5]He had not initially applied for their 2-year program but they shared with Cole about their plans to make the *War Machine * movie. ^[12]Cole pitched them a concept and won the job to write the script for it, but the studio then decided to save the project for a later date based on what *Iron Man 3 * was going to be. ^[5]The executives then asked Cole if he would like to join their writer's program instead. Cole took the opportunity and filled in Nicole Perlman's spot in the program. ^[5]

While in the program, Cole had knowledge that *Black Panther * was in the pipeline, yet Cole had to compete to earn the opportunity of being its writer and developer. ^[5]It took a few years after he was no longer a part of the program that Nate Moore discussed with Cole that they would be developing the Black Panther movie and they reached out to see if he was interested. President of Marvel Studios, Kevin Feige, admired Cole's writing and reached out to him to be the writer along with film director, Ryan Coogler. ^[2]