'Captain Marvel' directors say they got a great piece of advice from 'Black Panther' director Ryan Coogler

• "Captain Marvel" directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck turned to "Black Panther" director Ryan Coogler when they needed to talk to someone about the process of making a movie for the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
• Boden and Fleck told Business Insider the advice Coogler gave them was the motivation they needed to embark on the journey.

Making a Marvel movie means that a filmmaker will have to dedicate at least two years of their life to get it completed. And that doesn't even count the breakneck press that happens around the world once the movie is released.

So after numerous pitch meetings at Marvel Studios to be considered to take on directing duties of "Captain Marvel," with no clear indication if they would get the job, directing duo Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck thought to themselves, "Is this all worth it?"

Thankfully, they had an ally who was in the process of starting his own Marvel movie who they could turn to: "Black Panther" director Ryan Coogler.

Boden, Fleck, and Coogler all knew each other from the independent film scene they all started out in and the three also had the same agent, which made it easy for them to have a chat about the Marvel process.

"He was prepping 'Black Panther' then and he just let us know how much work this is and how much you really need to love the character to go down this road," Fleck told Business Insider. "So from that we just reminded ourselves, 'Why do we want to make this movie?' 'What's special about this character for us to commit to it for two years?'"

The talk with Coogler didn't lead to the duo radically changing how they continued in the pitch meetings with Marvel, but Boden said it did make them more confident to present the executives with story ideas they wanted to tell.

Read more: "Captain Marvel" editor describes what makes Marvel Studios a unique place to work, and the funny way she got the job

"In terms of not focusing on what [the executives] want to hear but focusing on what we want to say," Boden said. "Feeling that it's okay if what we say isn't what they want to hear because then we would end up not doing the movie and that's okay."

But the folks at Marvel clearly liked what Boden and Fleck had to say.

The duo eventually got the job and made "Captain Marvel" in a way that showcased their strengths as storytellers and also earned Disney a whole lot of money (already).

It had the third-largest March opening weekend of all time.

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