Between the Screens: A Conversation with Steven Caple Jr.

Caple’s feature film debut The Land (2016) was #FilmedInCLE and premiered at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival. It tells the story of four teenage boys who devote their summer to escaping the streets of Cleveland by pursuing the dream of professional skateboarding. It earned Caple the Black Reel Awards’ Outstanding First Screenplay Award in 2017 and the Special Jury Prize for Best Narrative Feature at the deadCenter Film Festival in 2016.

Caple recently wrote HBO’s high-profile Emmett Till project, produced by Will Smith, Casey Affleck and Jay-Z. The six-episode miniseries is adapted from Devery Anderson’s 2015 biography, Emmett Till: The Murder That Shocked The World And Propelled The Civil Rights Movement.

His next film was the 2018 sports action drama film Creed II, a sequal to the 2015 film Creed and the eighth installment in the Rocky film series. Stallone said of appointing Caple as director: “I believe it’s important for the director to also be a part of this generation like I was in mine, to make the story as relatable as possible. We are extremely lucky to have the talented young filmmaker Steven Caple Jr. to step up and accept the role of director. I am confident that he and Michael B. Jordan will hit it out of the park!”

Also, according to Deadline, Paramount Pictures and Hasbro Studios chose Caple to direct the new Transformers movie in the reinvented universe.

A Conversation with Steven Caple Jr. will be moderated by Mike Wendt, GCFC Production Coordinator, and cover topics such as:

About Caple and his work
How he discovered his passion
Getting started in the field
Advice to aspiring directors and writers
Caple’s Cleveland roots as inspiration
About his projects The Land and others
Audience Q&A

Special thanks to our presenting partner the Schauer Group for making this event possible.