Sinners is a 2025 American horror film produced, written, and directed by Ryan Coogler. Set in 1932 in the Mississippi Delta, it stars Michael B. Jordan in dual roles as criminal twin brothers who return to their hometown in the Jim Crow South, where they are confronted by a supernatural evil. The film co-stars Hailee Steinfeld, Miles Caton (in his film debut), Jack O'Connell, Wunmi Mosaku, Jayme Lawson, Omar Benson Miller, and Delroy Lindo.
Coogler began developing Sinners through his production company Proximity Media, with Jordan cast in the lead role. The project was announced in January 2024, and after a bidding war, Warner Bros. Pictures acquired distribution rights the following month. Additional roles were cast in April. Principal photography took place from April to July 2024. Longtime Coogler collaborator Ludwig Göransson composed the film's score and served as an executive producer.
Sinners premiered on April 3, 2025, at AMC Lincoln Square in New York City, and was theatrically released in United States on April 18, 2025. It received critical acclaim and was a commercial success, grossing over $371 million worldwide against a budget of $90 million. The National Board of Review and the American Film Institute listed it among the top ten films of 2025. Sinners garnered many accolades, including a record-breaking 16 nominations at the 98th Academy Awards, winning four: Best Actor (Jordan), Best Original Screenplay, Best Cinematography (making Autumn Durald Arkapaw the first woman to win the award), and Best Original Score.
It also received 13 BAFTA Awards nominations, winning three, including Best Original Screenplay; four Critics' Choice Awards; two Golden Globe Awards; two Actor Awards (including Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture); and a historic 18 nominations and 13 wins at the 57th NAACP Image Awards, including the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Motion Picture.
Plot
In 1932, identical twins and World War I veterans Elijah "Smoke" and Elias "Stack" Moore return to Clarksdale, Mississippi, after seven years in Chicago working for the Chicago mob. Using money stolen from criminal syndicates, they purchase an abandoned sawmill from the landowner Hogwood to open a juke joint for the local Black community. Their younger cousin Sammie, a singer and guitarist, joins them despite his pastor father Jedidiah's warnings about blues music being sinful.
Smoke and Stack recruit the musician Delta Slim as a performer, the local Chinese shopkeeper couple Grace and Bo Chow as suppliers, the field worker Cornbread as a bouncer, and Smoke's estranged wife, Annie, as a cook. Annie believes her Hoodoo practices kept the twins safe, but Smoke is skeptical after Annie failed to prevent the death of their infant daughter. Stack runs into his white-passing ex-girlfriend Mary, whom he abandoned to protect her from the White community. Elsewhere, the Irish-immigrant vampire Remmick shelters from Choctaw vampire hunters with a married Klansmen couple, whom he turns into vampire thralls.
Sammie, Delta Slim, and Pearline—a singer Sammie becomes enamored with —perform at the joint’s opening night. Unbeknownst to Sammie, his music summons spirits of performers from the past and future. The performance also attracts Remmick and his vampires, who offer money and music in exchange for entry. Smoke, suspicious, refuses. Smoke and Stack realize that their patrons' reliance on company scrip makes the joint's profitability impossible. Believing that outside income is necessary, Mary goes outside and talks to Remmick, and is turned into a vampire thrall by him. She then seduces and fatally bites Stack. A shocked Smoke shoots Mary, but she is unaffected and escapes. Outside, Cornbread is turned into a thrall as well.
Smoke closes the joint early; as the patrons and Bo leave, the vampires turn them. Stack revives as a vampire, but flees after Annie repels him with pickled garlic juice. Annie realizes their assailants are vampires and tells the survivors how to deter and kill them. Although Remmick and his vampires share a hive mind, their personalities remain intact.
Still unable to enter the joint unless invited, Remmick threatens to go to the Chows' home and turn their daughter Lisa. He then promises to leave the others in exchange for Sammie, whose musical skills could summon the spirits of his lost community. He, Stack and Mary try to entice the survivors with the freedom of vampirism, revealing that Hogwood heads the local Klan and plans to attack the joint at dawn, but the survivors still refuse.
Grace, enraged and wanting to kill the vampires before they turn others, invites them into the joint, and a fight ensues. Grace, Bo, Annie, and Delta Slim are killed; Mary, devastated by Annie's death, flees, and Remmick turns Pearline. Smoke incapacitates Stack, then assists Sammie in incapacitating Remmick, who is incinerated along with the horde by the light of the sunrise. Smoke sends Sammie home before he kills Hogwood and his men, but is fatally shot. He reunites with Annie and their daughter after dying. Meanwhile, Sammie disregards his father's pleas to seek salvation and travels to Chicago.
In 1992, Sammie, now a successful blues musician, is visited by an ageless Stack and Mary at his local blues club. Stack reveals that Smoke spared him after Stack promised to leave Sammie unharmed. Stack offers to turn Sammie and avoid his impending death, but Sammie declines, satisfied with his life. Sammie then performs a song for them, as they remained fans of his music over the years. As they depart, Sammie admits that despite still being haunted by that night, it was the greatest day of his life until the sun went down and the violence began. Stack wistfully agrees, since it was the last time he saw Smoke or the sun, and the only time they were all truly free.
Cast
Production
In January 2024, an untitled period film from writer, director and producer Ryan Coogler was reported to be in development through his production company Proximity Media, with longtime collaborator Michael B. Jordan cast in the lead role. Sony Pictures, Warner Bros. Pictures, and Universal Pictures were in a bidding war to acquire the distribution rights to the film, which carried a budget of around $90 million. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Warner Bros. greenlit the film with a production budget of $80 million, but the final budget climbed to $100 million. In exchange for the distribution rights to the film, Coogler was asking studios for first-dollar gross, final cut privilege, and ownership of the film twenty-five years after its release. The following month, Warner Bros. won the distribution rights to the film by acceding to Coogler's terms.
In April 2024, Jack O'Connell was cast as the film's villain. Delroy Lindo, Jayme Lawson, Omar Benson Miller, Hailee Steinfeld, Li Jun Li and Lola Kirke were cast in undisclosed roles.Attributed to multiple sources:
Wunmi Mosaku was cast as Smoke's love interest. Yao, Miles Caton, Peter Dreimanis, and Christian Robinson were added the next month. Halsey would audition for the role that went to Steinfeld. Machine Gun Kelly was offered the opportunity to audition for the role that went to Peter Dreimanis, but declined because he was not comfortable saying "nigger".
Principal photography began in New Orleans on April 14, 2024, under the working title Grilled Cheese, and wrapped on July 17. It was shot by cinematographer Autumn Durald Arkapaw on 65 mm film using a combination of IMAX 15-perf and Ultra Panavision 70 cameras and scenes thus alternate between the 1.43:1 and 2.76:1 aspect ratios. In shooting this movie, Arkapaw became the first female director of photography to shoot any movie on large format IMAX film. Kodak created a 65mm version of their Ektachrome 100D 5294 film stock specifically for the production, where it was used for a flashback sequence. The production spent $67.6 million on-location in Louisiana. The film's allocated budget was reported to have ultimately risen to around $100million. The film's production designer Hannah Beachler acknowledged that the way the church in the film was designed included crossed beams that made the "Wakanda Forever" gesture and paid homage to the late Chadwick Boseman, star of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) film Black Panther (2018).
Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), Storm Studios, Rising Sun Pictures, Base FX, Baraboom Studios, Light VFX and Outpost VFX provided the film's visual effects. Some of the film's costumes were originally designed by Ruth E. Carter for the planned MCU film Blade, but when production on it stalled, Carter was approached by Coogler to work on his film. Given both films' shared time period and similar settings within the Prohibition era, Carter was able to reuse her research for Sinners and was allowed by Marvel Studios to buy costumes she made originally for Blade to be used on Sinners. Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige said the studio no longer needed the costumes after deciding to move Blade from a period setting, so they were happy for Carter to use them on Coogler's film.
Influences
Coogler cited the films of Quentin Tarantino, Jordan Peele, Christopher Nolan (who is given an on-screen special thanks credit), Francis Ford Coppola, Brian De Palma, Spike Lee and the Metallica song "One" as sources of inspiration. He stated that Robert Rodriguez was a filmmaker he idolized growing up and took inspiration from two of his films in particular when coming up with the idea for Sinners: From Dusk Till Dawn (1996) and The Faculty (1998). Coogler also cited an array of other films as influences, including the Coen Brothers' No Country for Old Men (2007), Inside Llewyn Davis (2013), and Fargo (1996), as well as John Carpenter's The Thing (1982). He also noted that the Disney Channel Original Movie The Luck of the Irish (2001) was a major influence. Another key influence for the filmmaker was Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone (1959–1964), with his favorite episode being "The Last Rites of Jeff Myrtlebank". The biggest non-cinematic influence was Stephen King's novel 'Salem's Lot (1975).
Themes Coogler spoke about the parallels drawn in the film between African Americans, the Irish, and the Choctaw, noting the historical intermingling of these cultures and its influence on their musical traditions. He cited Delta blues musician Charley Patton, who Coogler says was "likely part Choctaw," mentioned as the original owner of the guitar played by Sammie.
Armenian-American film producer Sev Ohanian observes that the film is personal, rooted in Coogler's own heritage and cultural identity. He noted that Coogler drew heavily from his family history and musical passions, even describing the screenwriting process as a spiritual experience where he felt guided by the presence of his ancestors.
Coogler also said that the character of Remmick, who is Irish, identifies with the black characters because of "the connection between what we experienced – we being African Americans… forcibly removed from the continent of Africa… and the experience of the Irish people being forced to work land that has immeasurable abundance and wealth, but being denied that. So I mean, the connections between the two cultures are really obvious to spot."
Music