Seattle based Cheo Hodari Coker is the creator and former Showrunner and Executive Producer of Marvel’s Luke Cage. The critically acclaimed drama ran two seasons, from 2016-2018 and is popularly known as “the show that broke Netflix.”
A 1994 graduate of Stanford University, Coker started his career in journalism as a staff writer for the Los Angeles Times Pop Music section. He also contributed to Rolling Stone, Premiere, Vibe, The Source, XXL, Essence and numerous national publications, and has been featured on VH-1’s Behind The Music and Netflix’s Hip-Hop Evolution.
He’s the author of the book Unbelievable: The Life, Death, and Afterlife of the Notorious B.I.G. Coker co-wrote (with Reggie Rock Bythewood) 2009’s Fox Searchlight Notorious BIG bio-pic Notorious and segued into television writing for SouthLAnd, where he eventually rose to Supervising Producer and won an 2013 NAACP Award for the Season Four episode, “God’s Work.” Coker followed SouthLAnd with a stint as a Supervising Producer on CBS’s NCIS: Los Angeles, and Co-Executive Producer for Fox’s Almost Human, and Season Two of Showtime’s Ray Donovan.
Coker’s other feature film credits include the Imagine Entertainment/Blumhouse Film Lowriders (co-written with Elgin James) (2017), Creed II (Story by), and uncredited work on the Oscar nominated screenplay for Straight Outta Compton.
Coker was named Number 42 on The Root 100 Most Influential African Americans 2018.
