If you had to take a guess, how many studios would you say are desperate to greenlight a superhero film by a black director? One? Just a few? All of the majors? I cynically volleyed that question to coworkers in Slack last week when reports started circling that Spike Lee ( Do the Right Thing, Malcolm X, She’s Gotta Have It) was in consideration to direct an adaptation of Nightwatch for Sony, possibly with a script from Luke Cage’s Cheo Hodari Coker. My colleagues debated the query gamely, but the discussion didn’t end with the possibility of Lee taking on a Marvel hero. One day later, there was a report that Ava DuVernay (A Wrinkle in Time, Selma) would be directing New Gods, a DC saga of virtue and immorality that takes place in a realm of immortal beings known as the Fourth World. I was starting to get answers.

There’s a renewed sense of excitement afoot in Hollywood, and much of it has to do with the singular and sweeping success of director Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther, which has ruled the box office for five consecutive weeks, grossing an astronomical $1.2 billion internationally in that very small window of time. Such cinematic sovereignty hasn’t been engineered since Avatar, James Cameron’s 2009 sci-fi epic of love and colonization. But Black Panther’s impact goes beyond the bottom line—it’s also beloved by critics and cinematic proof that a black director with an all-black, gender-balanced cast can captivate audiences. It’s a triumph that tests a complex thesis: that major studios will now entrust directors of color with mega-budgeted, franchise-worthy films. I like to think of it as the Ryan Coogler Effect.

I'm not the only one anticipating this shift. Emmy-winning writer and actress Lena Waithe recently told Vanity Fair that she believes there will now be two eras: Before Black Panther and After Black Panther. "These execs are all looking around and saying to themselves, ‘Shit, we want a Black Panther; we want a movie where motherfuckers come out in droves and see it multiple times and buy out movie theaters,’" she said. "And because we also live in a town of copycats, there are going to be a lot of bad black superhero movies coming because everybody ain’t Ryan Coogler!”

Even with black cultural production at an all-time high, there are forces working against this theory. Conspicuously troubled by its own conservatism, gender and racial inequity remain constants in Hollywood, a business that has always projected a mirage of liberal progression. The sexual misconduct allegations against Harvey Weinstein opened a wound that, for decades, festered in the dark corners of studio lots and executive suites. And in 2015, marketing executive and activist April Reign’s #OscarsSoWhite hashtag brought attention to the Academy’s cold indifference to qualified nonwhite nominees; it’s since become ground zero for conversations around cultural inclusion as they relate to so-called creative institutions. Superhero films hold a particular placement in the industry’s firmament, with regard to their flagrant regurgitation of anemic bravery on the silver screen. A survey of recent history furnishes a disproportionate amount of tales centered on white men who champion the greater good, from Marvel’s Avengers and X-Men to DC’s Justice League.

This epidemic is partially why Black Panther feels so urgent, so of the moment. Black people have long envisioned self-governing societies scrubbed of white affliction; think of Octavia Butler and Samuel R. Delany, those dazzling literary world builders. The difference, now, is sheer magnitude—reach and resonance. Going into week six, Black Panther is already the second highest-grossing domestic superhero film of all-time. Coogler’s retooling of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s classic has elevated the hero into a new pantheon—it’s become a cultural wellspring that gives and gives.