Peyton Reed made his feature directorial debut with Bring It On.
Released in 2000, Bring It On was Reed’s first feature film as a director and became a number-one box-office hit. The comedy follows Torrance Shipman, played by Kirsten Dunst, as she takes over the Rancho Carne High School cheer squad and discovers that its championship-winning routine was copied from a rival team in East Compton. The film mixes competition, teenage comedy and a pointed story about cultural appropriation in cheerleading.
Before moving into feature films, Reed directed television, commercials and music-related projects. After Bring It On, he continued with comedies including Down with Love, The Break-Up and Yes Man. He later became strongly associated with franchise filmmaking through Marvel’s Ant-Man films, directing Ant-Man, Ant-Man and the Wasp and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. A useful distinction is that Bring It On was Reed’s feature debut, not his first directing work of any kind; his career already included television and commercial projects.