Director Ryan Coogler has four feature films under his belt, and every single one of them has made an impact on pop culture. His upcoming fifth film, Sinners, might just be his most ambitious project yet, as Coogler makes his first foray into the horror genre.
Starring Coogler’s friend and frequent collaborator, Michael B. Jordan, Sinners is a vampire film with a unique twist. In advance of the release of the second official trailer for the film today, Coogler participated in a special Q&A event moderated by movie influencer Juju Green, also known as Straw Hat Goofy.
Coogler talked about working with Jordan and why the filmmaking duo are so dynamic together.
“When we worked together on Fruitvale [Station], it was his first time in that lead role in a movie, and it was my first time making a movie. So in many ways, we’ve grown up together in the industry, you know, in these situations, and I definitely found a kindred spirit in him,” Coogler said. “He’s somebody who’s incredibly, incredibly gifted man; in some ways, kind of God-given. His charisma, his ability to kind of channel empathy without even trying. But the other facets that are the things under his control – his work ethic, his dedication to the craft, and the other thing is, this constant desire to want to push himself to increase his capacity, to continue to stretch.”
Jordan plays two roles in this film, twin brothers who are part of a Southern town with some unusual secrets and inhabitants. For Coogler, Sinners provided him the opportunity to explore his own family history. Similar to the work that he put into preparing for Black Panther, Coogler delved deeply into his family’s rich history in Mississippi.
“I’ve been blessed, where each each time I’ve made a film, you know, it’s become more and more personal, you know what I mean? And with this one, I was really digging into two relationships: one with my maternal grandfather, who I never met, he died about a year before I was born. He was from Merrill, Mississippi, and eventually moved to Oakland and married my grandmother, and actually built the house that our whole family was kind of based out of in Oakland,” Coogler shared. “And I had an uncle named Uncle James, who I came up with my whole life. He actually passed away while I was in post-production on Creed. And he was from another town in Mississippi, and he wouldn’t really talk about Mississippi unless he was listening to the blues, you know, unless he had a little sip of Old Taylor whiskey, and then he would reminisce. And you know, I miss him profoundly man, and I, with this film, kind of got a chance to dig into my own ancestral history here in the States. Not dissimilar to what I was doing with the [Black] Panther films, like that was generational ancestry, this is right there for me. I had a chance to really go to the South and scout and think, and the film is about the music that was so special to my uncle, and I couldn’t be happier with the film that we’ll have to show you all in a few months.”
In order to fully capture this world that Coogler created for Sinners, he wanted to combine traditional celluloid film with the best technology available today, IMAX. Despite having made massive blockbuster films like Creed, Black Panther and Wakanda Forever, this is the first time that Coogler filmed in IMAX.
“Working with all of my collaborators, it was all of our first times working with large format photography. The whole movie was shot on film, 65 mm, and we doing something that hasn’t been done before, and combining [Ultra] Panavision, which is a 276 format, very widescreen format. The most recent film to come out using this specific format was probably The Hateful Eight, with what [director of photography] Bob Richardson and Quentin [Tarantino] did with that film. And then that’s also combined with the full frame IMAX film photography, 15 perf, 65 mm film. And we making choices about when we’re using each, and it’s a pretty incredible contrast when we be seeing those together,” Coogler said. “The whole effort was for the experience to be immersive. We wanted to let folks experience this world. And for me, it’s the world that my grandparents were a part of. It was a world that they came up in, and it’s a time that’s often overlooked in American history, specifically for Black folks, because it was a time associated with a lot of things that maybe we ashamed to talk about. But for me, I got to have conversations with my grandmother, who’s nearly 100 years old, and do some really heavy research man. And it was exciting man, and to bring that time period to life, with the celluloid format that was around, but with the technological advancements that IMAX could provide, it’s really exciting.”
As Coogler dug more deeply into his family history and connection to Mississippi, he gained a greater appreciation for blues music and the mythology around the genre. Drawing inspiration from Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot, Coogler looked to tell his own version of a small town vampire story mixed with blues culture.
“A big inspiration for the film is a novel called Salem’s Lot. In the novel, it’s been adapted quite a few times in some really cool ways, but what’s great about that novel is – you know, when Spielberg talks about it, for him it was Peyton Place, which was another novel, meets Dracula. What happens when a town has got a lot of its own issues, a lot of interesting characters, meets up with a mythological kind of force of nature and it starts to influence the town? So that idea, for me, was a great way for me to explore some of the real things in this place that my grandparents and uncles who influenced my life came from, but also that a lot of American pop culture kind of came from, was birthed there,” Coogler explained. “One of the things we explore in the film is blues music and blues culture, and that became so many other things that affect what we do today. So it was great to be able to explore that. And that, literally, that music has a has a very close relationship with the macabre, so to speak, with the supernatural. You hear stories about Tommy Johnson and Robert Johnson selling their souls to be able to play the guitar the way that they do; you know, deals being struck and the toll that they can take. Devil’s music and the dichotomy of all of these incredible singers, even still to this day, they learn how to sing, they learn how to make music, in the church, but yet they chose to make music that maybe was frowned upon.”
Sinners premieres April 18th and clearly must be watched in IMAX.
Ron is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of POC Culture. He is a big believer in the power and impact of pop culture and the importance of representation in media.
