Ryan Coogler’s Big Swing With “Sinners” is Also a Love Letter to the Movie Theater

When Ryan Coogler was shopping the script for his fifth film around Hollywood, the excitement and competition for the rights to work with the filmmaker were equally high.  The major studios and streamers were vying to be able to produce and distribute Coogler’s original story, which, we’d eventually learn, was Sinners, his upcoming supernatural period piece. The reasons for the excitement and competition were obvious—Coogler hasn’t missed yet, all four of his previous films, which he wrote and directed, were critically acclaimed, and, when it came to his two Black Panther films, massive international blockbusters. Fruitvale Station, Creed, Black Panther, and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever have cemented Coogler’s status as one of the best filmmakers of his generation. The fact that his spec script was being met with open arms and checkbooks made complete sense.

Eventually, Warner Bros. made the deal that Coogler was looking for, which included copyright reversion down the line, similar to the one Quentin Tarantino struck. Sinners features Michael B. Jordan in the dual roles of Smoke and Stack, twin brothers who return from World War I to open a blues club in 1930s Mississippi and end up coming face-to-fang with supernatural predators in a bloody battle for their souls.

While there’s been a lot of heavy breathing over the future of the theatrical experience, with countless articles tracking the year-over-year performances of movie theaters, Warner Bros. is betting big on Coogler that he, like Christopher Nolan, Denis Villeneuve, Greta Gerwig, and others, are the kinds of artists who need the absolute biggest canvas to draw audiences by the millions into the multiplex. And Coogler is not afraid to take a big swing, as he’s done again and again in his career and is doing here, with his genre-fluid period thriller.

Speaking with Deadline, Coogler opened up about why he’s so excited to share Sinners with the world and why Warner Bros. has given him the tools and IMAX theater space necessary to draw audiences into the theater.

“Warner was incredibly supportive of us with this film. I’m so happy we did it there,” Coogler told Deadline. “Part of the deal we had, I don’t want to speak on the specifics, but it was a deal that happened in a competitive marketplace. And while it is obviously rare, I’m not the only person to ever get a deal like this. I think that the support that they showed the film was great, in terms of us shooting on celluloid…Pam and Mike, advocating for the artistic vision of it, and believing it can be an event; Jeff Goldstein securing an ability for us to have IMAX screens and availability for it to be projected on film prints.”

Coogler went on to say that his deal with Warner Bros. allows him to deliver an experience that cannot be duplicated at home, no matter how big your screen is.

“That is a major, major thing that I think matters in how this thing will be seen and received by the public,” Coogler said. “The formats that we shot on Ultra Panavision 70, 276 aspect ratio…these formats were invented, along with Vistavision and Cinemascope, at a time when the film industry was competing with television. They had to have a reason to get people in the audience. We’re going to give you more images, let’s get it bigger. Let’s give them images that look different from the box that they are now watching at home. It is more ironic that we are the first film to be shown in that format, in addition to the IMAX 15 format that was popularized, let’s face it, by Chris [Nolan] at a time in 2008 when motion pictures were competing with peak TV. Before the streaming era, when TV got really fu*king good. Mad Men, Breaking Bad, and 2008 were the turning point, right? That was the time when Chris made The Dark Knight and [Jon] Favreau made Iron Man. When it was, how are we going to get people out of the house when they got all this interesting shit to watch at home?”

Coogler’s passion for the cinematic experience is baked right into his latest film, which draws inspiration from stories he learned from his grandmother. “The experience of going to the movies, it’s everything to me,” Coogler told Deadline. “I don’t know what I would do if I couldn’t do that. My grandmother’s first date with my grandfather, who I never met, who was from Mississippi, that first date was at the movies. I found out when I interviewed her for this movie. My first date with my wife, who is my business partner now, mother of my children, producer of this movie, who means so much to me. Our first date was at the movies. That feeling of going into a dark room, seeing something for the first time, surrounded by strangers. I believe in that. I want to put something bold out there, because I believe in that. I’m glad Warner Brothers was supportive of that vision, and I’m glad that they saw the value in me as a filmmaker and in this story, that they made a deal that was very competitive. So that’s what I got. You feel me?”

We feel him, and audiences will, too, when Sinners hits the big screen, including the biggest IMAX screens there are, on April 18.

Read the full interview with Ryan Coogler on Deadline.

Featured image: L to r) MICHAEL B. JORDAN and director RYAN COOGLER in Warner Bros. Pictures’ “SINNERS a Warner Bros. Pictures release.© 2025 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. All Rights Reserved.