Ryan Coogler and Michael B. Jordan sink teeth into vampire genre with 'Sinners'

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On their fifth movie together as actor and director — following Fruitvale Station (2013), Creed (2015), Black Panther (2018), and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022) — Michael B. Jordan and Ryan Coogler wanted to try something vastly different than what they’ve worked on before.

Coogler, whose previous two outings were superhero films he directed for Marvel, wanted to lean into his family’s history, dive into his love of music and pay tribute to his uncle.

Sinners, a music-steeped vampire film hitting theatres Friday, allowed him to do all that and more.

“It started with my relationship with my uncle James,” Coogler says of his sweeping “genre fluid” story. “He was a Mississippi guy, who fled the state to Oakland, California. For a long time, he was the oldest male member of my family, and he had a great passion for blues music. It was the only music he listened to. I always associated that music with him until his passing in 2015.”

After Coogler finished up work on Wakanda Forever, he found himself listening to some of his uncle’s old records to reminisce and think about their time together and the music gave him the idea to make the new movie.

Told over the course of one day in the 1930s in a small town in the southern U.S., Sinners casts Jordan as twin brothers — Smoke and Stack — who return home with their sights set on becoming proprietors of their own juke joint. During their opening night, the brothers’ establishment is set upon by a group of vampires who promise, “We’re goin’ to kill every last one of yah.”

Coogler, who revived the Rocky franchise a decade ago with Jordan on the first Creed movie, said he weaved a story about vampires into his elegy because he “loves genre films.”

“It’s something that’s not very well known from my filmography, so I was excited to make my entry there,” he says. “It’s something that’s close to my heart.”

The horror film also stars Hailee Steinfeld, Jack O’Connell, Delroy Lindo, Omar Benson Miller, Li Jun Li, and newcomers Miles Caton, Yao and July Talk’s Peter Dreimanis.

Vampires play a big part in the movie, but they are just one aspect of Coogler’s story, Jordan says.

“He did an incredible job … a big element of blues songs was this idea of selling your soul to the devil and making a deal,” he says. “Vampires were seen as one of those creatures that made deals with folks. How he tied it all together with family and music and the supernatural element of it all was great.”

Coogler’s horror odyssey is one that is designed to be seen on the big screen. The Oscar-nominated filmmaker shot Sinners with an eye for how it would be shown on Imax screens, using 65mm film and getting tips on large-scale directing from Christopher Nolan and his wife and producing partner Emma Thomas.

In a partnership with Kodak, Coogler dropped a 10-minute video to YouTube showing off different sizes of film stock and pointing out that Sinners is filmed in a 2.76:1 aspect ratio – the same as Ben-Hur and The Hateful Eight.

“I’m really excited to announce that Sinners was captured on film,” Coogler says. “That’s a format that I fell in love with when I was in film school.”

“We shot the film using two different camera systems, one proprietary to Panavision — it’s called Ultra Panavision 70, used on films like Ben-Hur and most recently The Hateful Eight. But another format we use is IMAX film cameras,” he adds.

The film is a love letter to theatrical experience, Jordan says.

“You’ll laugh at it. You’ll be constantly stomping your feet and talking to the screen during it,” Jordan says with a laugh. “It’s a real genre fluid film. It’s not one thing.”

Jordan doesn’t want to give too much away, but he wants the audience’s jaw on the floor by the time they get to the surprising ending Coogler has come up with.

“When people walk away from it, I want them to feel like they got a lot. That it was a full meal,” he says.

Sinners opens in theatres April 18.

mdaniell@postmedia.com