Ryan Coogler explained the personal motivation behind securing the ownership rights of his new film Sinners.
The film, set in the Jim Crow-era South and starring Michael B. Jordan, was reportedly part of a bidding war between multiple studios. According to Puck News, Coogler requested first-dollar gross points, final cut, and ownership of the film 25 years after its release, to which Warner Bros. agreed.
In a new interview with Business Insider, the 38-year-old filmmaker, whose past films include Black Panther and Creed, said that the move was less of a strategic power play given his billion-dollar box office track record and more about personal symbolism.
“That was the only motivation,” Coogler told BI.
He also shared that the inspiration for Sinners came from his grandfather, whom he never met, and his uncle James, who passed away in 2015.
“My uncle James loved to do three things: listening to Delta blues music, he loved drinking all types of whiskey, and he loved the San Francisco Giants, watching them on TV and listening to them on the radio,” Coogler said. “So if you went and spent time with him he was doing one or all three of those things.”
“That act of listening to that music and feeling he was there with me is kind of what inspired the period setting and the blues. And that is why the movie is so personal,” he added.
Sinners will be the first feature film Coogler owns, but he ruled out owning future works.
“No, it was this specific project,” he said.
Reports on Coogler’s ownership deal apparently left some competing studios “freaking out,” with one senior executive telling Vulture the Sinners deal sets a “very dangerous” precedent that “could be the end of the studio system.”
In 2017, Quentin Tarantino chose Sony over Warner Bros. to produce Once Upon a Time in Hollywood when Sony agreed to his rare demand for eventual copyright ownership after 30 years, according to a 2019 report from the Hollywood Reporter. Some sources suggest the deal reverts ownership back to Tarantino within 10 to 20 years.
Only a small pool of directors, including George Lucas and Richard Linklater, have successfully negotiated ownership stakes in their films.
Sinners is in theaters now.
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