Juel Taylor is an American filmmaker. He wrote Creed II (2018), Space Jam: A New Legacy (2021) and They Cloned Tyrone (2023) with his writing partner Tony Rettenmaier.
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Early life and education
Taylor was initially interested in studying video game design when he attended college at the University of Florida.
His first introduction to making movies was a music video he created for his college's digital arts program. Taylor then studied film as a graduate student at the University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts, where he met Rettenmaier.
Career
In 2017, Taylor co-directed Actors Anonymous, the feature film adaptation of James Franco's novel of the same name. The film screened at Cinequest and the Newport Beach Film Festival.
For They Cloned Tyrone, Taylor used the neighborhood where he grew up as the main inspiration for the fictional city in the film. He says Tyrone was inspired by his desire to make "a bootleg 'Scooby-Doo' movie", combined with real-life experiences including "friends back home who had some pretty, like, unfortunate circumstances hit them." The draft changed through the pitching process, eventually leading to the movie being produced as a Netflix feature film. Taylor thanked Guillermo del Toro for help with editing several scenes.
Filmography
Short film
Feature film
Television