After some months off the campaign trail, there have been questions surrounding how Ryan Coogler’s hit “Sinners” can once again be top of mind for voters, now that much of awards voting has commenced. While the Southern Gothic vampire thriller came back to theaters for a bit around Halloween, it had not yet gone full speed ahead with For Your Consideration events, the kind that gather much of the cast and crew to state their case about why the film should be deemed the best that 2025 cinema had to offer.
Wisely, the folks behind the “Sinners” campaign took a beat to let other contenders schedule screenings, Q&As, and receptions around the Governors Awards, which is primetime for gathering Academy members back to Los Angeles, and set their events for midway through the following week, when things had died down.
The “Sinners” campaign weekend commenced with a Wednesday night screening on the Warner Bros. lot attended by most of the cast, including Delroy Lindo, Miles Caton, Jayme Lawson, Omar Miller, and Michael B. Jordan, who had so far been able to do little press for the movie, as he’s currently directing and starring in the latest “The Thomas Crown Affair” remake. The following morning, the actor reunited with “Sinners” director Ryan Coogler to commemorate their late friend and “Black Panther” collaborator Chadwick Boseman at his long-awaited Hollywood Walk of Fame ceremony.
Similarly scheduled far in advance of any awards conversations was an event organized around Michael B. Jordan accepting the American Cinematheque Award later that Thursday night at The Beverly Hilton, home of the Golden Globes ceremony. After speeches from stars Jordan has shared the screen with, like Tessa Thompson, Daniel Kaluuya, and Octavia Spencer, as well as more unexpected presenters like Mahershala Ali, Ben Affleck, and Bradley Cooper, it was the previously reserved Coogler who most successfully lightened the mood.
“I’m really upset because I never had to follow up that many incredible actors before,” said the filmmaker, referencing how he was even preceded by his Oscar-nominated “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” star Angela Bassett popping on screen to send Jordan well wishes. “I’m about to go on stage and they’re like, ‘Hold on, it’s a video,’ and it’s fucking Tom Cruise.”
Coogler had little to worry about, as his stories of the decade-plus he and Jordan have worked together on five films was one of the highlights of the night, equally as funny as it was informative about what makes the “Sinners” star a great actor. For example, to help distinguish between the twins, he borrowed a technique from the making of “The Godfather” and wore shoes that were a size too small for Stack, “so he was never comfortable,” and a size too big for Smoke, “so he wouldn’t move unless it was necessary.”
Coogler ended his speech by saying “even the brightest stars start off from the ground up in blue collar positions. Every single one of these incredible actors that came up and spoke, producers that came up and spoke, none of them had Hollywood connections before they started. I know all their stories. They came up blue collar and had a dream and went for it and it paid off.”
That sentiment about finding success from any background extended into Jordan’s own acceptance speech. “Everybody talks about chasing dreams. Nobody really talks about how to build,” said the actor and filmmaker. At his production company, Outlier Society, “we always say to build a house and they’ll come. And we’ve been building this house for a while.” Jordan added that, early in his career, he asked himself, “‘Who could I be? Was I a leading man? Did I have what it takes?’ All questions and doubts and things a young actor has. I didn’t have those answers yet. And when you don’t have those answers, you keep your head down and you do the work. That’s it. That’s the only thing you can really control.”
Jordan thanked the director for changing his life, and said, “We took risks. We said ‘Our stories deserved to be told.’ And people overwhelmingly responded. Kids saw themselves on the screens in ways they hadn’t before. And that was the whole point. That’s the power of storytelling, empathy, connection. ‘Sinners’ brought me back to my beginnings.”
The next event provided yet another full circle moment, with the Warner Bros. events team transforming South LA eatery Somerville into a juke joint complete with the same signage as the film. The Friday night event had a purpose that was twofold: to hand Coogler’s Proximity Media the key to the WB lot and to celebrate the music of “Sinners.” Present among the crowd inside the intimate space were the film’s cast and crew — who joked the room triggered memories of night shoots — plus celebrities like Don Cheadle, Sterling K. Brown, Natasha Lyonne, Anika Noni Rose, and Daniel Scheinert.
Prior to presenting the key to Proximity Media founders Ryan and Zinzi Coogler and Sev Ohanian, Warner Bros. Motion Picture chairs Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy gave speeches where the latter said, “This has been one of the most extraordinary experiences ever,” in reference to “Sinners,” and that the producers “are visionaries, they are passionate, they are loyal, they are some of the greatest people I’ve ever met and have gotten to know, and I will forever be blessed and privileged to have this experience.”
Looking toward the future, De Luca said, “We’re so up for anything you guys want to do. We think it’s so important to bring new voices to the table and it’s in that spirit, in that tradition and with our unending gratitude for the movie ‘Sinners’ that we’d like to present to you the key to the studio for Warner Brothers.”
While Ohanian and Zinzi Coogler expressed how their experience making “Sinners” validated their company’s mission to create cinematic events that draw audiences closer to overlooked subjects, and also proved what Proximity could accomplish as the sole production company on a project, the film’s director addressed De Luca and Abdy directly, saying “so much of this is about timing. It took me my whole life to make this movie over a decade, to process the death of my uncle who inspired it. And I was so happy that it worked out for us to have this company, to have this screenplay, to have all these relationships at the same time that you guys got the power of one of the legacy studios.”
He continued, “I know you guys are lovers of cinema. Each of you individually and together have made movies that have shaped the culture, movies that have inspired us. Your careers are very storied. So it was an honor to go to battle for you guys. And at this time where so much was at stake, both of you guys individually and for the industry, it was awesome to have the ball in our hands for an opportunity to get folks out to the theaters. And you guys believed in us the entire time. Never wavered.”
The film’s composer Ludwig Göransson, who had performed one of the Best Original Song submissions “I Lied to You” with his co-songwriter Raphael Saadiq and “Sinners” breakout Caton at the American Cinematheque event the night before, was the one to transition the conversation over to music, with a story about how working on the film afforded him the opportunity to take his father on a Blues trail trip — a dream he had put off for decades.
The trio’s arrangement of “I Lied to You,” the centerpiece song that precedes “Sinners” most talked-about musical moment, is extremely savvy. Saadiq, a three-time Grammy-winning artist and producer in his own right, eases listeners in with the first verse, only for Caton to then blow the room off each venue with his soulful runs in the back half of the blues song.
The upstart actor, who used to be a backup singer for Oscar winner H.E.R., also co-wrote a song on the “Sinners” soundtrack, a duet with co-writer Alice Smith called “Last Time (I Seen The Sun),” that’s the other Best Original Song submission for the film. Though it took a second for the lively audience to quiet down, Caton and Smith’s dynamic vocal performances more than made the case for “Sinners” to have both songs make it into the category, if not spoil what has long been expected to be a “Golden” victory. Later in the night, Göransson’s wife Serena, who was the executive music producer on “Sinners,” brought Smith back out for a dazzling rendition of “I Put a Spell on You,” and blues legend Buddy Guy, who makes a cameo in the film, even hopped on the small stage to perform a song.
The Juke Joint event might have felt too hard to top, but the “Sinners” weekend still ended on a high note with brunch at La Ola at the Four Seasons Beverly Hills on Saturday morning, and a nighttime screening and Q&A moderated by Oscar winner Barry Jenkins at the Academy Museum that had the 939-seat David Geffen Theater packed to the gills. Jordan also stepped away for a solo Q&A at the Aero Theatre in front of 400+ people.
This one weekend of effort felt like enough to stake away any concerns that “Sinners” will have a tough time being a major Oscars contender. But, at this point, the film exceeding expectations is nothing new.