Sinners is 100% Getting a Best Picture Nomination
Yes, I know it's too early to predict anything but the Oscars are absolutely going to invite Ryan Coogler's vampire tale in. Here are 5 reasons why!
Sinners is the story of the moviegoing season. And what’s not to love? It has a plethora of incredible performances, top-notch production, insidious vampires, amazing music, and not one but TWO Michael B. Jordans (Smoke/Stack? More like Smoke/Show!)
Ryan Coogler has created both a critically and commercial powerhouse film that surprised almost everyone (especially its own studio, which made a unique deal with Coogler that basically assumed the film would fail). But, in retrospect, its massive success at the box office feels almost obvious. Of course it was going to be a hit! It’s badass, tells wild and deeply moving story, and in the long sundown of the superhero era, audiences are starving for the fresh blood of original IP, new ideas, and unique stories that don’t require knowledge of 36 other films and TV shows before watching. Plus, Ryan Coogler is one of the greatest directors alive right now with an impeccable track record; would the director of Fruitvale Station, Creed, and both Black Panthers really give us a basic-bitch vampire movie? Absolutely not.
But okay John, the movie has good reviews and has good box office. Plenty of films get both and don’t make it to the Oscars (hey Wonka, how’ve you been?) What makes you so sure the Sinners buzz can survive until the new year?
I’m so glad you asked, reader. Here are four reasons why I’m confident Sinners is in it for the long awards haul:"
#1 - There’s Always at Least One Blockbuster in the Best Picture Lineup
Fun fact! Since the expansion of the Best Picture category in 2009, almost every single year at least one film that would traditionally be described as a “blockbuster” has gotten nominated for Best Picture. Now, I know the term blockbuster can be squishy so for our purposes, we’ll use it to mean a film with a very large budget (over, say, $70 million) that makes at least $150 million at the box office.
One notable exception is 2020, the first Oscars during the pandemic, where several of the films nominated made less than $1 million at the box office and the winner, Nomadland, was the biggest film of the lineup with $39 million.
And just last year, we had two! Wicked and Dune 2!
It makes sense that the Academy would create a “slot” for a Big Film considering ratings for the Oscars broadcast has been in precarious territory for awhile. The entire reason for the Best Picture expansion, in fact, was to bring more movies in (and hopefully a Big Movie or two!) and thus bring more eyeballs to the broadcast.
But not just any blockbuster will do when it comes to the Best Picture conversation. The above films all share some things in common: great reviews and fantastic filmmakers and tons of buzz (well, maybe not Ford v Ferrari but that film was Boomer Catnip so of course it got in.)
Sinners has all of this! So hurdle number one has already been cleared, easily.
#2 - There Won’t Be A Buzzier Blockbuster This Year
Yes, there will be other big movies this year. Minecraft was gigantic and Thunderbolts has some of the best reviews the MCU has seen. But it feels exceedingly hard to envision another film coming out this year that captures our attention and arrives with such fervent buzz as Sinners has.
Last year, we had Wicked mania. The year before, Barbenheimer. In 2022, there were 4,000 articles about how Top Gun: Maverick single-handedly saved movies. Sinners buzz is on that level, with it’s box office strength stretching for weeks after its release and everyone asking each other if they’ve seen it yet.
So not only is Sinners fit this blockbuster slot perfectly, it’s also much better than many of the films that occupied that slot in past years. It goes deeper, hits harder, and if audiences and Oscar voters can resonate with America Ferrera’s hand gesture tutorial disguised as a feminist monologue in Barbie, then Coogler’s journey to the heart of music, community, culture, and spirituality for black Americans absolutely passes any But Is It Serious Enough? test lazy Oscar voters and prognosticators might throw up.
Okay, yes, Sinners has the slight misfortune of being released just a smidge before the summer blockbuster season (and we know that spring releases generally don’t fare so great at the Oscars) but remember that Dune 2 was released in February of last year and it easily held onto its buzz and its place in the Best Picture Top 10 was never questioned. Oh, and Top Gun was also released in late April!
So actually, yeah, it’s early release probably don’t really matter. But do you know what does matter?
#3 - Sinners Has An Oscar-Calibur Crew
Coogler, along with being one of the best directors on Earth, brings with some of the absolute best behind the scenes people working right in Hollywood right now.
Sinners reunites Coogler with the legendary costume designer Ruth E. Carter (also the only black woman to have won two Oscars), his good friend and musical genius Ludwig Goransson (also a two-time Oscar winner and, if you ask me which you didn’t but tough, the heir apparent to John Williams), the absolutely brilliant production designer Hannah Beachler (who won an Oscar for her incredible work in Coogler’s Black Panther and remains the only black woman to win for Production Design), and soon-to-be legendary cinematographer Autumn Durald Arkapaw (who shot Black Panther: Wakanda Forever and last year’s sumptuous The Last Showgirl and was Emmy nominated for her work on Loki).
All this to say, Sinners is going to be in many more conversations than just Best Picture. Its tech-side bona fides are off the charts and it will absolutely figure into many technical categories. I’m not saying it will get nominated in all of them, but it will definitely be a factor in most of them.
But what about the above-the-line categories (screenplay, acting, and directing?) I have such good news for you, my friends.
#4 - It Has Multiple Oscar-Calibur Performances
One thing you’ll notice from the grid of blockbuster films earlier in the article is that even those the Oscars are intentional about regularly nominating at least one “big” film for Best Picture, it is less friendly to the idea of nominating performances from those same big films. Barbie did it with Ryan Gosling and America Ferrera, Wakanda Forever’s Angela Bassett got nominated, and Christoph Walz from Django Unchained and Heath Ledger from The Dark Knight both won Oscars. But overall, blockbuster performances are typically passed on.
So the fact that Sinners has at least four very buzzy performances feels like extra credit. Not only will the film fill the blockbuster slot in BP and show up in multiple tech category conversations, it has the juice to be part of the acting categories as well.
First, and most likely, is the legend Delroy Lindo who plays wisecracking pianist Delta Slim with both incredible comic timing and disarming depth. Lindo was in the Oscar conversation before with his lead performance in Spike Lee’s Da 5 Bloods, but missed out on a nomination. Here, it feels like everything is lined up for him: it’s a scene-stealing role in a buzzy blockbuster from a veteran actor who has never been nominated before. In other words, all things the Best Supporting Actor category absolutely loves. Of all the great actors in the film, I’d keep my eyes on Lindo the most.
The wonderful Wunmi Mosaku is also stands out and if there is any goodness in the world she’ll be in the conversation for Best Supporting Actress. She’s the soul of the film and gives a powerful, heartbreaking performance as Annie, Smoke’s witchy-adjacent wife.
She’ll have some competition, though, from her own castmate, Oscar-nominee Hailee Steinfeld, who plays the pivotal and hard-ass Annie, Stack’s ex-lover. She also plays a complicated, fascinating role in the film’s themes on race, appropriation, and how whiteness operates in black spaces.
And last but not least we have the swaggering, dual tough-guy performance of Michael B. Jordan, who plays scheming twins Smoke and Stack with such ease you immediately forget he’s just one person (also, after Mickey 17, it appears multiplicity is officially a theme for 2025!) It’s some of the best work Jordan has ever done and while the role may not steal scenes the same way Lindo, Mosaku, Steinfeld, and some of the smaller characters do, the film would absolutely not work without potent mixture of ass-kicking confidence and surprising vulnerability. I’m not sure he’ll be able to parlay his performance into an Oscar nomination, but I do fully expect to see him on some long lists and maybe at a few of the big award shows (Globes definitely).
Okay, okay. John. We get it. The film is really good and has great talent involved on camera and off. It’s still so early and so many films have yet to come out! How can you be so sure it won’t get overshadowed? Because bitch:
#5 - There’s Always Fall Oscar Movies That Fall Off
Remember The Shipping News? Or Joker: Folie A Deux? Welcome to Marwen? Blitz? Babygirl?
The biggest reason people don’t make bold predictions this early in the year is they want to wait and see how the other Oscar-y films that come out fare. And yes! There will be a bouquet of excellent films released later this year that will garner lots of buzz and be major players in the awards race. But, there always a good chunk of films that, on paper, seem like Oscar shoo-ins that turn out to be glossy farts instead.
Sinners, truly, has already cleared the hardest hurdles by being a critical and box office success and revealing itself to have depths beyond those typically associated with its horror-vampire genre. All it needs to do now is not get overshadowed, and that likely will not happen with the films on the horizon.
Yes, there will be a film or two out of Cannes primed to take the Parasite/Triangle of Sadness/Emilia Perez “prestige international cinema” slot. And there will be a bevy of fall films that reveal themselves to have major performances and/or incredible work in specific categories. There will be a Flow-like surprise from a small film somewhere. There will be a Return To Form from an older director and a Breakout Film from a filmmaker currently on the bubble of greater renown (much like Sean Baker with Anora) and a Period Film With Serious Coats and a Less Interesting But Still Serious Film That Is Good But Not Great But We Have To Fill Out 10 Spots film.
But as far as the Genuinely Good Blockbuster spot, that one is already all sewn up.
Sinners sunk it’s teeth in a few weeks ago, captured audiences’ attention, and I am confident has more than enough buzz to be let into the Oscar race. What do you think?
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