A whole new type of horror movie is about to descend on Easter weekend — Ryan Coogler’s vampire film Sinners starring Michael B. Jordan.
The film is Coogler’s first from his own original idea after making two Black Panther films for Marvel and Creed (2015) as well as Fruitvale Station (2013). Sinners also marks his fifth time collaborating with actor Michael B. Jordan.
Read on for everything we know about Sinners from Ryan Coogler:
When does Sinners come out?
The film arrives in theaters April 18.
How long is Ryan Coogler’s Sinners?
The film’s runtime is two hours and 18 minutes.
Who is in the cast of Sinners?
Michael B Jordan leads the ensemble, and he portrays twin brothers Smoke and Stack. Hailee Steinfeld stars as Mary. Jayme Lawson, Delroy Lindo, Miles Caton, Wunmi Mosaku, Omar Miller, Li Jun Li, Jack O’Connell, Christian Robinson and more also star.
What is Sinners about?
The horror film centers on Michael B. Jordan‘s twins who return to their hometown to escape their troubled lives, only to realize that an even bigger threat awaits them there. Coogler hinted that vampires wouldn’t be “the only supernatural element” the film deals with.
Another big theme of the story is blues music and how it can transcend realms and call larger forces into action. The twins also represent one of the archetypes Coogler wanted to explore in the movie.
RELATED: Ryan Coogler Teases ‘Sinners’ Themes And Supernatural Elements Beyond Vampires In His “Personal Love Letter” To Cinema
“Each time I’ve made a film it’s become more and more personal. With this one I was digging into two relationships, one with my maternal grandfather who I never met. He died about a year before I was born,” Coogler said in a virtual press conference held by Warner Bros. yesterday. “He was from Merrill, Mississippi and eventually moved to Oakland, married my grandmother and actually built a house that our whole family was based out of in Oakland.”
Who else is behind Sinners?
Coogler received advice from Christopher Nolan and Emma Thomas. Ludwig Göransson, who recently won the Oscar for best original song for Oppenheimer (2024) and who has previously worked with Coogler on the Black Panter films, executive produces.
How was Ryan Coogler’s Sinners shot?
“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,” Coogler told Deadline in an exclusive interview, attributing the format, which includes IMAX 65 mm shot on Panavision lenses in the widest aspect ratio to filmmakers like Christopher Nolan, Matt Reeves and Denis Villeneuve, the latter two having recently made films with this technology for Warner Bros. — The Batman (2022) and both Dune films.
Coogler credited Warner Bros. with their support for how he wanted to make the movie.
RELATED: Ryan Coogler On Why He Pushed Back ‘Black Panther 3’ To Make Vampire Horror Pic ‘Sinners’ With Michael B. Jordan
“They still have the access to those things left over from that [Christopher] Nolan era and they’ve made it available to filmmakers like Matt Reeves and Denis Villeneuve and then making it available to me. That is a major, major thing that I think matters in how this thing will be seen and received by the public. It’s very interesting,” he said. “I think that the support that they showed the film was great, in terms of us shooting on celluloid…Pam [Abdy] and Mike [De Luca], 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 also traced the technology he used to a very competitive time between movies and 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 was 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?”
RELATED: Hailee Steinfeld’s Multi-Racial ‘Sinners’ Role Had “Deeply Personal” Impact On Actress
