“We Literally Burned Our Actual Set”: Writer-Director Ryan Coogler and Producers Zinzi Coogler and Sev Ohanian on Sinners

Even before its smashing opening weekend theatrical success, Sinners, Ryan Coogler’s first original directorial outing since his 2013 indie hit Fruitvale Station, was knocking loud on the box office doors. Early reviews praised the film’s unique genre-bending vision, weaving vampire lore and Irish songs into a 1932-set horror-musical dramatic thriller about identical Black twin brothers leaving behind their Chicago gangster lives to return to their sharecropper roots in the Mississippi Delta and start their own juke joint—that is, before the vampires come a-seducing. Before that, Smoke and Stack, twins played by Michael B. Jordan in a bravura dual performance, throw […] The post “We Literally Burned Our Actual Set”: Writer-Director Ryan Coogler and Producers Zinzi Coogler and Sev Ohanian on Sinners first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Apr 24, 2025 - 22:43

“We Literally Burned Our Actual Set”: Writer-Director Ryan Coogler and Producers Zinzi Coogler and Sev Ohanian on Sinners

A man in a blood-stained undershirt and a man in overalls stand in a pool of water outdoors.

Even before its smashing opening weekend theatrical success, Sinners, Ryan Coogler’s first original directorial outing since his 2013 indie hit Fruitvale Station, was knocking loud on the box office doors. Early reviews praised the film’s unique genre-bending vision, weaving vampire lore and Irish songs into a 1932-set horror-musical dramatic thriller about identical Black twin brothers leaving behind their Chicago gangster lives to return to their sharecropper roots in the Mississippi Delta and start their own juke joint—that is, before the vampires come a-seducing. Before that, Smoke and Stack, twins played by Michael B. Jordan in a bravura dual performance, throw […] The post “We Literally Burned Our Actual Set”: Writer-Director Ryan Coogler and Producers Zinzi Coogler and Sev Ohanian on Sinners first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.