in january 2011, forest whitaker's production company was looking for new young filmmakers to mentor. coogler met head of production, nina yang bongiovi, and showed her his projects. shortly after, he had a meeting with whitaker, who decided to support "fruitvale". coogler met with advisers of sundance screenwriters lab. he developed the script with the help of creative advisors tyger williams, jessie nelson and zach sklar. the film received funding from the feature film program (ffp) and the san francisco film society.