‘Sinners’: Read The Screenplay For Ryan Coogler’s Fusion Of History, Music And Mysticism That Forged A Genre Blockbuster
Deadline’s Read the Screenplay series spotlighting the scripts behind the awards season’s most talked-about movies continues with Warner Bros‘ Sinners, written and directed by Ryan Coogler who reteamed with Michael B. Jordan for the genre-bending blockbuster.
Sinners has emerged as a major contender, leading the Critics Choice Awards was 17 nominations including nominations for Best Picture, Best Actor (Michael B. Jordan), Best Supporting Actress (Wunmi Mosaku), and Best Director and Best Original Screenplay both for Coogler. It also picked up seven Golden Globe noms including Picture, Director, Actor and Screenplay.
The pic, which has grossed $368 million globally since its April premiere, also was named a Top 10 film of the year by AFI and the National Board of Review.
The story of Sinners is set in the post-Reconstruction South and unfolds over a single day in the town of Clarksdale, MS. It centers on twin brothers, Smoke and Stack, both portrayed by Jordan. After chasing success in the North, the brothers return home with the intention of opening a juke joint. The establishment quickly becomes a site of celebration, where music and dance meld in an embrace of artistry, culture and history. However, this new beginning is short-lived as an evil descends, threatening to devour the heart and soul of the community.
Coogler’s original script delves into the nuanced, separate identities of the twins, exploring how they differ in personality and how they hold their trauma differently. Supporting the lead characters is Annie (Mosaku), Smoke’s true love and the town’s trusted spiritual healer and Hoodoo conjurer. Miles Caton also features in a breakout role as Samuel “Sammie” Moore, a musician whose journey and music at the juke joint form a key throughline of the film.
The story weaves together several rich and complex thematic threads rooted in Black culture, identity and the spiritual traditions of the Mississippi Delta. Coogler also explores the historical folklore of musicians like Tommy and Robert Johnson selling their souls, and the dichotomy of music with roots in the church being labeled “the devil’s music.”
While the film is a self-described bone-chilling action thriller and features elements of the supernatural, including vampires, Coogler insists it’s about more than just one monster. It incorporates the “mysticism of the supernatural” alongside the weight of history. This genre fluidity allows the spiritual to heighten the narrative, dealing with archetypes like the supernaturally gifted musician.
The film is deeply personal to Coogler, drawing on his own ancestral history in Mississippi and the story of his maternal grandfather, who migrated to Oakland. The script infuses Black history and the global migrant experience at large into its thematic foundations, examining the Delta as a melting pot of migrant cultures. The twin brothers’ return from the North subtly evokes the wider history of the Great Migration.
Read the screenplay below.
