Posted in: Movies, Warner Bros | Tagged: ryan coogler, sinners, Warner Bros

Sinners Director Discusses Why the Movie Needed to Be Shot on Film

The director of the popular 2025 film Sinners opens up about how he wanted to approach the film from a technical standpoint.

Sinners became one of 2025's breakout horror hits for several valid reasons. For starters, Ryan Coogler's original vampire story finds ways to reinvent vampire mythology into a Southern Gothic tale about Black ownership, faith, music, and survival in the Jim Crow era Mississippi Delta. Specifically set in 1932, the film follows twin brothers Smoke and Stack Moore, World War I veterans who return home to open a juke joint that becomes a spiritual refuge and a target for both racist violence and vampires.

With a reported budget of nearly $100 million, Sinners was labeled by some as a gamble. Instead, it turned into a deserving, word-of-mouth hit, earning about $368 million worldwide and drawing rave reviews for its mix of supernatural horror, period drama, and musical sequences. In fact, critics praised its bold visuals and performances, helping the film land an impressive 97% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a strong box office profit after weeks of remarkably soft drops. This is an especially tough thing to achieve for a horror film.

Another part of that impact also comes from how the movie looks. In Sinners, Coogler reunited with cinematographer Autumn Durald Arkapaw (Black Panther: Wakanda Forever) and insisted on shooting on film, including IMAX seventy-millimeter presentations. And, when recently speaking on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, the filmmaker described that choice as his biggest non-negotiable.

Ryan Coogler Says Sinners Needed to Be Shot on Film

In his words, "I think, look, the non-negotiables were, number one was that it would be shot on film. That was a big one. I was probably, out of all of them, that was the one that I think was the most important. The average person in a day is going to interact with, like, I got to imagine, hundreds, if not thousands, of digital images." He went on to add, "We're so used to the digital image that when you see something that was captured with celluloid, it feels different." Coogler's insistence on film certainly helped give his vampire blues epic a texture that stands out in a landscape dominated by clean digital images, reinforcing the sense that viewers are watching something vivid and ultimately, lived in.

In Sinners, Michael B Jordan plays both twins, alongside Hailee Steinfeld, Wunmi Mosaku, Delroy Lindo, Jayme Lawson, Jack O Connell, and others in an ensemble that moves between juke joint performances and bloody nocturnal battles. Now available on digital platforms and physical media after its theatrical run, Sinners continues to build a following as both a crowd-pleaser and a conversation starter.

Enjoyed this? Please share on social media!

Stay up-to-date and support the site by following Bleeding Cool on Google News today!