Nia DaCosta is the Brooklyn-born, Harlem-raised writer-director behind Candyman, The Marvels, and 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple.
Quick Specs
- Born: 8 November 1989, Brooklyn, New York; raised in Harlem
- Known for: Candyman (2021), The Marvels, Hedda, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple
- Occupations: Director, screenwriter, producer
- Education: NYU Tisch (BFA 2011); Royal Central School of Speech and Drama (MA)
- Based in: London
Overview
Nia DaCosta wanted to be a poet. Then, at sixteen, an A.P. English class handed her Heart of Darkness, she watched Apocalypse Now, and she never looked back. Five features later she holds three firsts: the first Black woman to open a film at No. 1 at the US box office, the first Black woman to direct a Marvel Studios film, and the first woman to direct in the 28 Days Later franchise. Horror, superhero, Ibsen, Rage Virus: she jumps every fence, and she does it on purpose.
The Life
Nia DaCosta was born 8 November 1989 in Brooklyn, New York, and grew up in Harlem. Her mother, Charmaine DaCosta, a Jamaican immigrant, was a founding vocalist of the reggae group Worl-A-Girl. Her parents divorced when she was nine; she describes herself as a latchkey kid who escaped into books, movies, and TV — Full Metal Jacket on repeat, and the original Candyman, which scared her in middle school. Her first film, the short The Black Girl Dies Last (2009), shot at boarding school on a DVD camera she got for Christmas, was already arguing with the genre: a deliberate subversion of the horror cliché that the Black character dies first.
She enrolled at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, graduating in 2011, then earned an MA from London’s Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. After school she worked as a television production assistant: her first big scripted job was PAing on the pilot of HBO’s Vinyl for Scorsese, then The Knick for Soderbergh, plus work around Steve McQueen’s sets. The lesson, in her own words: “everything comes from the top.” She is London-based now.
The Work
She was writing and making shorts while PAing, and her Little Woods script was one of 12 projects chosen for the 2015 Sundance Screenwriters and Directors Labs, where she met Tessa Thompson. She funded a short-film version of Little Woods through Kickstarter — 72 backers, $5,100, for the short, not the feature.
Little Woods (2018 premiere, 2019 US release) was the feature debut, writer-director: Thompson as Ollie, Lily James as her sister Deb, in a fictional North Dakota fracking boomtown. DaCosta built it out of the 2014 Affordable Care Act debates, after models like Winter’s Bone and Frozen River. Her rule: “Complicated women with agency is my M.O.” Tribeca premiere April 2018, where she won the Nora Ephron Award; US theaters 19 April 2019.
Between features she directed two episodes of Netflix’s Top Boy (2019) and wrote for HBO’s Industry — and while directing Top Boy in London, she learned she was on Jordan Peele’s shortlist to direct Candyman.
Candyman (2021) is the horror centerpiece: director and co-writer, screenplay by Jordan Peele, Win Rosenfeld, and DaCosta, for Monkeypaw. It is a direct sequel to Bernard Rose’s 1992 film only — a “spiritual sequel” returning to a gentrified Cabrini-Green. Yahya Abdul-Mateen II plays Anthony McCoy — the baby Helen Lyle saved in 1992, grown up — not a new Candyman. Teyonah Parris plays Brianna Cartwright; Colman Domingo plays William Burke; Tony Todd returns as Daniel Robitaille. Budget $25 million; worldwide gross $77.4 million. Released 27 August 2021 after three COVID delays.
DaCosta’s central creative act was the hive. In Rose’s film, Candyman is one man. In hers, Candyman is a collective — Robitaille plus Sherman Fields, a Cabrini-Green man beaten to death by police in 1977 after a false accusation, plus every Black man since killed by racist violence and folded into the legend, finally including Anthony himself. Burke’s line: “Candyman ain’t a ‘he.’ Candyman is the whole damn hive.” Her thesis: “Candyman, at the intersection of white violence and black pain, is about unwilling martyrs.” The shadow puppetry was Peele’s suggestion and DaCosta’s development, built over months in Chicago with the Manual Cinema collective: paper puppets with wire armatures, manually operated, no CGI. Her ethics of the image: “we could not create more disturbing imagery of Black people being brutalized by race violence.” The film opened at No. 1 with $22.3 million, above a ~$15 million projection — making DaCosta the first Black woman director to have a film open at No. 1 at the US box office. Rotten Tomatoes: 84%. Todd’s appearance was his final performance as the original Robitaille before his death in 2024.
The Marvels (2023) was the Marvel film: director and co-writer, with Brie Larson, Teyonah Parris, and Iman Vellani as the three leads whose light-based powers entangle and swap their places. Hired in August 2020, age 30, she became the youngest director of a Marvel film — beating Ryan Coogler’s record — and the first Black woman to direct a Marvel Studios film, the fourth woman overall. The film opened at No. 1 with $46.1 million — the best opening ever for a Black woman director, and the lowest opening weekend ever for an MCU film — and finished at $206.1 million worldwide: the lowest-grossing MCU film, and the highest-grossing film ever directed by a Black woman. Four release-date moves stretched the job from two years to three and a half; she moved to London to prep the greenlit Hedda and finished The Marvels remotely, by an agreed process, with no bad blood.
Hedda (2025) was her fullest authorship credit: writer, director, and producer, adapting Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler (1891). Thompson was cast — and set as a producer — in April 2023; principal photography began in the UK in January 2024, before The Bone Temple. She moved it from 19th-century Norway to a grand country estate in 1950s England; recast Hedda as a queer, mixed-race Black woman; gender-swapped the lover into Eileen Lovborg (Nina Hoss); and compressed the whole thing into a single lavish party in near-real time. Hedda, in her words, is “as vulnerable as she is vicious.” Toronto premiere September 2025; US theaters 22 October 2025; Prime Video 29 October. Rotten Tomatoes: about 90%; Metacritic: 70 — acclaimed, with dissenters.
28 Years Later: The Bone Temple (2026) was the takeover: director only, screenplay by Alex Garland — the first feature she did not write or co-write. Ralph Fiennes as Dr. Ian Kelson, Jack O’Connell as Sir Lord Jimmy Crystal, Alfie Williams as Spike, with an uncredited Cillian Murphy return as Jim. In talks in April 2024 to take over from Danny Boyle; shot back-to-back with Boyle’s 28 Years Later. Released January 2026. Her pitch was to refuse the impersonation: “I don’t want to make a Danny Boyle movie, because I don’t know how to do that. I’d rather watch one.” Boyle and Garland did not interfere. Her one script demand: “more infected.” Where Boyle’s film was about the nature of family, hers is about the nature of evil: Spike inducted into Jimmy Crystal’s Fingers cult, while Dr. Kelson — building his ossuary Bone Temple — befriends the Alpha Samson, suggesting the Rage Virus may be treatable. She is the first woman to direct a film in the 28 Days Later franchise — the series she watched obsessively as a young teenager at boarding school. Rotten Tomatoes: 92% at the time of writing, from 320 critics; Metacritic: 81; CinemaScore: A−. Commercially soft: $57.9 million worldwide against a $63 million budget.
The DaCosta Touch
DaCosta directs from a rule she stated early: “write what you know emotionally.” That is how a Harlem-raised New Yorker wrote rural North Dakota without condescending to it. Her visual signature is mirrors, reflections, and withheld violence — horror staged in the summoning mirror, in puppet-shadow, in pulled-back wide shots. She builds repeat company: Thompson, cinematographer Sean Bobbitt, and Parris bridging Candyman and The Marvels. She runs her sets the way her PA education taught her — everything comes from the top — and she has said she revisits Apocalypse Now before starting a film.
Why She Matters
DaCosta holds three distinct firsts: the first Black woman director to open at No. 1 at the US box office (Candyman); the first Black woman to direct a Marvel Studios film, and Marvel’s youngest director at hiring (The Marvels); the first woman to direct in the 28 Days Later franchise (The Bone Temple). She rewrote what Candyman is — one legend became a hive. And the honors arc closes the Sundance circle: the 2015 Labs participant received the Institute’s Vanguard Award for Fiction in 2026, alongside a Rome lifetime-achievement honor in 2025.
Trivia & Facts
- The director of Candyman will not perform her own film’s ritual: she has said she will never say “Candyman” five times in a mirror — “No. Never. And never will!”
- She met Tessa Thompson at the 2015 Sundance Labs; Thompson would star in Little Woods and Hedda.
- Four minutes into the Marvels pitch meeting, Brie Larson texted Tessa Thompson a single all-caps message: “NIA DACOSTA.”
- The Candyman prologue puppet teaser was released on 17 June 2020, during the George Floyd protests — not part of the initial rollout.
- Her one script request on The Bone Temple was “more infected.”
FAQ
Who is Nia DaCosta?
A Brooklyn-born, Harlem-raised writer-director behind Candyman (2021), The Marvels, Hedda, and 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple.
Is Candyman (2021) a remake?
No. It is a direct sequel to Bernard Rose’s 1992 film. Yahya Abdul-Mateen II plays Anthony McCoy — the baby Helen Lyle saved in 1992, grown up — and Tony Todd returns as Candyman.
Did Nia DaCosta abandon The Marvels?
No. Four release-date moves stretched the job from two years to three and a half; she moved to London to prep Hedda and finished The Marvels remotely, by an agreed process, with no bad blood.
What is Nia DaCosta’s best film?
Candyman for the horror landmark, The Bone Temple for the takeover, Hedda for the most personal. Start with Candyman.