What Ryan Coogler's ‘Sinners' success does and doesn't mean for Hollywood
Ryan Coogler's 'Sinners' represents many things that moviegoers and people who work in the entertainment industry say they want more often. It's an original film with a big movie star and a singular director who was able to wrangle lots of money and freedom from one of the industry's biggest studios.
Most importantly, it's a hit.
The $90-million horror film starring Michael B. Jordan grossed $48 million in ticket sales in the U.S. and Canada ($63.5 million, including international box office) during its opening weekend, exceeding expectations and unseating 'A Minecraft Movie' from the top of the charts.
The back-to-back success of 'Minecraft' and 'Sinners' has given Warner Bros. studio chiefs Michael De Luca and Pam Abdy some breathing room as they try to lead the storied Burbank-based studio through a daunting recovery period following flops including 'Mickey 17' and 'Joker: Folie à Deux.'
It's a bright spot for an industry that has been struggling to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, even as Broadway and concerts bounce back. 'Sinners' has stellar reviews, an 'A' CinemaScore (the first for a horror movie) and viral momentum online, so it should have a long and healthy run.
And yet some film business insiders have been acting less than enthused, driving people including Ben Stiller to critique trade coverage that described the results as anything less than a resounding achievement.
A widely shared Vulture article from last week highlighted the unusual nature of Coogler's pact for the film. In the midst of a bidding war between multiple studios, Coogler's reps demanded a significant budget, final cut and a percentage of the theatrical box-office gross (as opposed to having to wait for the studio to break even).
Those are favorable terms for a filmmaker these days. But the most interesting element, previously reported by Puck, was that the rights to the picture are set to revert to Coogler after 25 years. Senior executives at rival studios, speaking anonymously to Vulture, sounded the alarm that this will catch on, with one saying it set a 'very dangerous' precedent that 'could be the end of the studio system.'
That's a bit hyperbolic.
These types of deal terms are not necessarily unheard of, but they are quite rare. For 'Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood,' Quentin Tarantino got Sony Pictures' Tom Rothman to agree to a deal that would send the copyright back after 30 years, a model inherited from the 'Pulp Fiction' director's Miramax and Weinstein Co. days. But two examples hardly make a trend.
Even if asking for rights reversion becomes more prevalent, that perk would likely be reserved for the most exceptional filmmakers.
Coogler has a track record of commercial and critical success, parlaying his 2013 Sundance Film Festival breakout 'Fruitvale Station' into the heavyweight class of franchise directors with 'Creed' and 'Black Panther.' Selling tickets while keeping your artistic identity is a rare feat, and Warner Bros. naturally wants to be in business with Coogler, not to mention his frequent collaborator Jordan. If the studio is willing to overpay, there's good reason to.
It's clearly a testament to the value of talent such as Coogler and Tarantino (a two-time Oscar winner).
Coogler himself told Indiewire that he wouldn't necessarily demand to take back the rights on future titles, but that for a movie like 'Sinners,' about Black men starting their own business in a sharecropping community, it made sense. (Warner Bros. retains first and last right of negotiation to distribute 'Sinners' after the 25-year mark, according to a studio source.)
Further, giving up the rights to a film after 25 years might not be as much of a sacrifice as it seems, according to insiders who spoke to The Times. Yes, film libraries have value and drive steady revenue. They're often a major factor in the valuations of acquisitions including Amazon's purchase of MGM Studios and Skydance's takeover of Paramount. That's not nothing. But the added financial value of a movie is usually marginal after a quarter-century has passed.
In a streaming era that's largely about attracting and retaining subscribers, a few older movies are unlikely to move the needle. If you open up Netflix, for example, how many of the featured film titles are more than 25 years old? There are plenty of older series that streamers covet, but shows such as 'Seinfeld' and 'Friends' have hundreds of episodes that keep viewers coming back.
One producer who spoke anonymously estimated that movies tend to monetize most of their value within five to 10 years.
Nonetheless, Coogler's deal may be the latest sign of a broader change in media and entertainment. Former studio executive Doug Shapiro argued in a social media post that, as technology disrupts the industry's 'intermediaries' such as studios, record labels and publishers, more bargaining power is shifting toward top talent.
The practice of allowing rights to go back to top-tier artists after a certain amount of time is already well established in the music industry, and has spread beyond just the biggest acts, said Bill Hochberg, a veteran music and media lawyer at Raines Feldman Littrell LLP in Los Angeles. But don't expect it to become the norm anytime soon for movies, where there's more at stake financially.
'Rights reversion has become common in the music industry for recording artists, who often have leverage to get their rights back after a few years, and so it's not surprising to see this trending for A-list film talent,' Hochberg said. 'It shows how the music biz is sometimes a step ahead of the film biz. But I think it will be some time before the film industry adopts rights reversions as broadly as the music business has.'
For Warner Bros., neither 'Sinners' nor 'Minecraft' solve all of the company's problems, but they each help the studio regain its footing after a rough few months. Warner Bros. said it was the first time since 2009 that two movies from the same studio grossed more than $40 million on the same weekend (using numbers not adjusted for inflation).
The biggest test for the Warner Bros. regime will come with July's release of 'Superman,' written and directed by DC Studios co-head James Gunn. The company also has to worry about Paul Thomas Anderson's upcoming Leonardo DiCaprio film 'One Battle After Another,' which carries a reported $130 million production budget before marketing costs.
But if franchise-type films like 'Minecraft,' 'Superman' and 'The Batman' keep working, it gives De Luca and Abdy the ability to take more chances on filmmaker-driven projects. You know, the types of films everyone complains that Hollywood doesn't make anymore.
This TV series about Jesus is making millions — at the box office. 'The Chosen,' a TV series about the life of Jesus Christ, has attracted Christians and non-churchgoers alike. Now in its fifth season, it has made a splash debuting on theatrical screens.
Netflix posts strong earnings despite economic headwinds. Some analysts believe Netflix will weather any pullback in the advertising market caused by global trade disputes.
Disney's parks are its economic engine. Tariffs could put a damper on it. Already facing a new rival theme park in Orlando, Fla., Disney must now contend with a more difficult economic environment that could dampen attendance.
CBS wins a temporary reprieve in 'Wheel of Fortune,' 'Jeopardy' fight with Sony. A judge previously ruled that Sony Pictures Television could take over distribution of the lucrative game shows.
Will Trump's tariffs crash TV's spring ad-selling party? The timing of an economic downturn could lead to companies cutting their ad budgets.
On-location production was up 7% from a year ago last week, but still down significantly from 2023.
I didn't go to Coachella this year, but I am bingeing our coverage, including these photos.
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According to Great American Media, Hicks Equity Partners has been joined in their initial investment by several other sources, including Deason Capital (a Dallas-based family office run by conservative activist and donor Doug Deason) and Sony. Hicks Equity Partners did not respond to a request for comment. 'Right now, we're going through a period where religious conservatives are increasingly assertive and very energetic in funding and expanding their own cultural space,' said Anne Nelson, author of Shadow Network: Media, Money and the Secret Hub of the Radical Right. While it rejects an explicitly political label, Great American Media receives much of its funding from sources that also fund politically conservative organizations and candidates. They and other similar production companies believe they can power their growth through servicing a large swath of viewers who sound a lot like how Republican candidates describe their voters. 'We have people in our culture who very much want all aspects of their life to be consistent with family-centered values,' Leo says. 'When they're in the marketplace, or when they're in the political world, or when they're simply doing what people do in life to engage in leisure and entertainment, they look for that kind of family-values centered thinking and approach to life.' In the world of faith-based television and movie content, business is booming. Sound of Freedom, a 2023 thriller distributed by the faith-based network Angel Studios about child trafficking that critics called a vehicle for promoting conspiracy theories, minted over $184 million in North America. That made it one of the most successful independent movies ever. His Only Son, another 2023 Angel Studios film, made over $13 million on a $250,000 budget. The Chosen, an ongoing television series about Jesus by filmmaker Dallas Jenkins, claims to have crowdfunded almost $100 million and reached a quarter of a billion people via streaming. Crowdfunding is a popular tool for faith-based production companies that use their audience's enthusiasm — often around a particular political point — to raise cash. Since 2022, The Daily Wire, a conservative media company co-founded by commentator Ben Shapiro, has also produced multiple successful television shows and films and has become a big player in this space. House of David was a huge crossover hit for Wonder Studios, and a starting point for Leo's mission to get more traditional studios and streaming platforms to promote these types of stories. 'I don't see this as being in competition with big Hollywood. I see this as being an opportunity for big Hollywood to make targeted investments that make them money at a time when it's hard to make money in producing movies,' says Leo. Great American Family, meanwhile, grew its viewership by 20 percent between the fourth quarters of 2023 and 2024, making it one of the few networks achieving that sort of rapid growth, according to internal documents from GAM shared with POLITICO Magazine and Nielsen ratings. (Others include conservative media networks Fox News and Newsmax.) Over the same timespan, Hallmark's audience shrunk by 9 percent and Lifetime's by 13 percent, according to Nielsen ratings. Hallmark and Lifetime still maintain larger audiences in total than Great American Family, though. On the business side, many faith-based production companies follow a similar proposition to a channel like Hallmark: build out a slate of movies and TV shows that follow a tried and true formula of simple love stories and moral lessons. 'The reason the model works is because you keep budgets down. These are not genre films. These are not films that require an awful lot in terms of location. Often they're reusing actors,' says Adam Nayman, a Toronto-based film critic and professor at the University of Toronto. 'You kind of build up your own star system where these people are not stars, but they become recognizable to your audience.' GAM's streaming service is currently advertising 'Summer Romcoms' like Sweet Maple Romance, 'Military Heroes' like Peace River: God, Country & The Cowboy Way, and 'Stories of Faith' like Disciples in the Moonlight. The company also launched a specific childrens' hub on their streaming service this week. They are trying to build a catalog of films that fit together in one neat, Christian package. 'Sometimes you'll say, 'I love that show, but I don't know where it is — is this on Max? Is this on Netflix?'' said Kristen Roberts, Great American Media's chief revenue officer and executive vice president of programming, in a recent interview at GAM's New York offices. 'We want to be the complete opposite of that. We want people to say, 'I watch Pure Flix, I watch Great American Family,'' referencing two arms of GAM. The goal, she said, is for viewers to say, ''I watch that service' more than 'I watch that particular show.'' Faith-based networks also have the benefit of being able to position themselves in direct opposition with what they argue is a liberal agenda in Hollywood. The community of faith-based filmmakers can set themselves up as the antidote to cultural products that they see as inappropriate for children and adults alike. 'When you look at White Lotus and you look at situations where they're creating storylines that have incest in them and they're being applauded by the entertainment community, that's an intentional way of taking aberrant behavior and trying to normalize it,' Abbott said on the Moms for America podcast. 'We see it all the time in entertainment — every day. You can turn on almost any movie, any network, go to any movie, and I know it's a very intentional strategy.' The success of faith-based media companies is in large part a reaction to the kind of frustrations that Abbott elucidates. The industry is buoyed by the very thing that it rails against — and it's the response that drives some of the success. 'They've really not ever tried to pretend that they're for everyone,' says Nayman. 'Instead, they say, 'isn't this what you've been missing.' And if you're the one getting that message, and you're the one being reached by that advertisement, then your grievance is being stoked, even if it's underneath the guise of a warm hug.' 'You're assuming that people are fed up with anything that resembles something mainstream or something secular,' Nayman adds. 'And I think they really, really take advantage of a polarized moment.' There's tension between faith-based content and the rest of the media landscape. The faith-based films and television shows — when they're reviewed at all — are regularly panned by critics. Sound of Freedom, the film from this universe that was recently reviewed by the most mainstream critics, has a Metacritic score of 36 out of 100. 'It's bizarre, unsettling and yet — in the filmmaking equivalent of turning wine to water — bracingly dull to boot,' read a review in The Telegraph. 'The quality is a really big issue,' Leo acknowledges. He argues conservatives need to invest in incubating talent that can make family-values movies and shows that are more slick, better produced and appeal to a wider audience. The art in this space often has no real aspirations towards acclaim as it's connoted by an Oscar or Emmy. In fact, in some ways they've created a parallel industry, with their own critics and markers of success. The Movieguide Awards, which are held every year and which largely honor films and television that Movieguide — a service that brands itself as 'movie reviews for Christians' — believes connects with their values. In 2025, winners included the movie Reagan, actor Candace Cameron Bure for A Christmas Less Traveled and Americans With No Address, a documentary about the country's homelessness crisis narrated by actor William Baldwin. Movieguide rates Hollywood films and gives them a 'family content' rating. In the company's annual 'Report to Hollywood,' they argue that films with strong Christian values perform better at the box office. Their formula relies on the often strong performance of children's films and doesn't include every mainstream hit; both Barbie and Oppenheimer had low 'family content' ratings, for example. 'We have a new generation that's having kids, and they want faith and values, their generation does not want sex and violence.' says Ted Baehr, the publisher and editor-in-chief of Movieguide. He cites this year's Academy Awards Best Picture winner Anora, about a New York sex worker, which made a little over $20 million at the domestic box office. 'In Hollywood [that] is pathetic,' he says. 'It's worthless. And all the Academy Award winners were pathetic.' (The film was generally considered an indie success; it was made on a $6 million budget.) While Hollywood has long been a bastion of liberalism, there wasn't always such a stark divide between mainstream Hollywood and religious fare. But in today's political climate, the gap is widening. According to April 2024 research from Pew, 59 percent of Protestants align with the Republican Party compared to 38 percent who align with Democrats, and among white Evangelical Protestants, 85 percent lean Republican while only 14 percent lean Democrat. Christians of all faiths are more likely to be Republicans, where Jews, Muslims and anyone unaffiliated with a particular religion are more likely to be a Democrat. The large partisan split among white Evangelical Protestants in particular has grown steadily and significantly since the start of the Reagan era. And that gap has been reflected in available entertainment options. In the Facebook group 'Great American Family (GAC) Fan Community', users post every day about how the network is one of the only ones that represents their interests, values and politics. In a recent post, a fan wrote, 'GAC SEEMS TO HAVE SOME GREAT PROGRAMMING COMING UP FOR GOOD FRIDAY INTO EASTER. THANK YOU! I SAW SOME DISTURBING STUFF ON A MOVIE WITH HALLMARK OVER THE WEEKEND. ONLY TUNED IT IN WHEN IT WAS ALMOST OVER AND IT WAS 10 MINUTES OF AGENDA!' Her post was flooded with supportive comments. 'Stopped watching Hallmark movies when they cowered to the masses allowing same sex couples. Don't miss it and LOVE Great American Family!!,' another member of the group replied. Abbott uses and cultivates that sense of cultural alienation to market his content. Along with A Christmas Spark — where after two days on set Lopez's character has moved from a big-city office setup to charming small-town USA — GAM's offerings include the upcoming Home Sweet Christmas Wedding starring Cameron Bure and a slate of released Easter-themed productions including Forty-Seven Days with Jesus. Watching GAM is not only an escape from Hollywood, but also a signifier of your own values or politics. While spending your money or time with a Great American Media product, you're voting for something. It's not about artistic innovation or form, it's about sending a message. 'I think that 'Christian' is used by the media to downplay or to stereotype,' Abbott told Moms for America. 'It's reverse racism or however you want to define it. You get stereotyped and put in this box. And that's what they want to do, they want to put faith in a box and make it go away. And we will never let that happen.' — Tessa Berenson Rogers contributed to this report.
