Ryan Coogler’s new film Sinners could potentially change the director’s life just 10 years after he was deep in debt, thanks to a historic deal he signed with studio Warner Bros.
The original, genre-hopping supernatural thriller, which stars Michael B Jordan and Hailee Steinfeld, opened in theatres over Easter weekend. With its impressive $93m (£69m) worldwide earnings, the Warner Bros release surged past A Minecraft Movie to lead box office figures.
Beyond the impressive feat that an original movie could garner such huge interest in the IP-heavy movie landscape of 2025, one of the most notable things about Sinners is the ownership deal that Coogler has struck.
According to a report by Vulture, Coogler, also behind films such as Black Panther and Creed , will reportedly own the film after 25 years, a concession that is virtually unheard of within Hollywood.
This means for the rest of his life, Coogler could begin to receive royalties from streaming services and TV broadcasts of the film that would usually go to a production studio.
CNBC reports that Coogler could also earn money from merchandise and license fee rights for the film for a set period of time.
Speaking to Business Insider, Coogler said the inspiration for the deal came from the movie itself, where two brothers fight for ownership of a juke joint in the heavily racist world of 1930s Mississippi. “That was the only motivation,” Coogler said.
It comes after Coogler recently told the WTF with Marc Maron podcast that when he was filming Creed in 2015 “I wasn’t making no money,” adding: “I was $200,000 in debt for film school. It was bad.”
Despite this film’s success, a recent article published by Variety noted that while its box office takings are a “great result,” “profitability remains a ways away,” given the film’s “eye-popping $90m price tag before global marketing expenses”.
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Actor and director Ben Stiller hit back at the publication’s claims, writing on X/Twitter: “In what universe does a $60m dollar opening for an original studio movie warrant this headline?”
Stiller later responded in agreement to a commenter, who argued that “[$60m] seems like a killer opening weekend”.
The Independent’s Clarisse Loughrey wrote in a four-star review that Sinners feels like “some kind of final stand for original ideas”, adding: “One can only hope audiences recognise its bounty of riches.”
