Marvel’s Captain America 4 has hired Nigerian-American Julius Onah as its director, the fourth film in the Marvel saga.
The Hollywood Reporter first reported the news exclusively. Deadline subsequently confirmed it too.
Anthony Mackie is set to star in the fourth Captain America film. The film will follow the events of the Disney+ series The Falcon and the Winter Soldier and series writers Malcolm Spellman and Dalan Musson are writing the film.
In the series, Sam Wilson (Mackie) did not want to pick up the Captain America shield after Steve Rogers. He reconsidered after the government hired John Walker (Wyatt Russell), who proved to be less than noble.
Onah made his feature film directorial debut with 2015’s The Girl Is In Trouble, after directing several short narrative and documentary films. Onah directed The Cloverfield Paradox and his third film, Luce, premiered at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival.
Onah is also attached to direct the Jean-Michel Basquiat biopic Samo Lives, which he co-wrote, and the college admissions film Bad Genius, according to Deadline.
Marvel has not announced a start date or release date for the fourth Captain America.
Onah was born in Makurdi, Benue State in Nigeria.
He was raised in the Philippines, Nigeria, Togo and the United Kingdom before moving to Arlington County, Virginia with his diplomat father, Adoga Onah.
He graduated from Washington-Lee High School in Arlington, VA and received his B.A. in theater from Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut.
He completed an M.F.A. from the graduate film program at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University where he was selected as a Dean’s Fellow.
He is also a recipient of the prestigious Jack Kent Cooke Foundation Scholarship.
His twin brother, Anthony Onah, is also a director, with his first feature film The Price released in 2017.
Julius Onah’s work has screened at festivals around the world including Sundance, Berlin, Tribeca, London, Dubai, Los Angeles, Melbourne and Camerimage.
In the summer of 2010, he was selected as one of Filmmaker magazine’s 25 New Faces of Independent Film. In 2013, he was selected as one of Studio System’s 10 Up and Up Feature Directors and Forbes Magazine’s 13 African Celebrities To Watch.
While at NYU’s graduate film program he completed his first feature as his thesis, The Girl Is in Trouble (2015) with executive producer Spike Lee, featuring Alicja Bachleda, Wilmer Valderrama, Columbus Short, and Jesse Spencer.
He is set to direct thriller film Bad Genius a remake of the 2017 Thai film of the same name.