“There is no terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it,” Alfred Hitchcock once said — and there may be no filmmaker in today’s Hollywood who is better at cranking up that anticipation than Jordan Peele.
As a writer and director, Peele’s mastery of the art of the tease has helped deliver a hat trick of era-defining, genre-scrambling hits — 2017’s “Get Out,” 2019’s “Us” and 2022’s “Nope” — that have collectively grossed more than $680 million at the global box office and earned three Oscar nominations and one win for original screenplay. Peele earned an additional Oscar nod for producing Spike Lee’s best-picture-nominated 2018 drama “BlacKkKlansman.”
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What truly sets Peele’s work apart, however, is his ability to hook audiences with the promise of thrills, only to subvert their expectations with deeper, often discomfiting meditations on race, class, spectacle and surveillance. In the wake of each of Peele’s films, a cottage industry has sprung up around decoding what it all means — not exactly something you can say about the average jump-scare flick.
“Jordan toes the line in such a unique way,” said actress Keke Palmer, who co-starred in “Nope.” “He makes the promotion of his films so palatable, but once you actually sit in that theater, you see that he took no shortcuts and is truly dedicated to giving his audience cinema.”
Since breaking out on the sketch-comedy show “Key & Peele,” the 45-year-old writer-director has proven himself a force on the small screen as well, producing series such as CBS All Access’ reimagining of “The Twilight Zone,” Amazon’s “Hunters” and HBO’s “Lovecraft Country.” And in between his boundary-pushing film and TV projects, including this year’s action thriller “Monkey Man,” which he produced, Peele keeps his comedy chops sharp with voice roles in shows such as “Big Mouth” and movies such as “Toy Story 4.”
Yet no matter how busy he is, Peele’s commitment to craft never wavers. “Jordan is fierce and knowledgeable and always curious,” Palmer said. “But he also takes his time — and that is the hardest thing to do in this world.”
