Oakland native Ryan Coogler, and his Southern-gothic, musical horror epic “Sinners,” were the big winners in 2026 Oscar nominations Thursday, scoring a record 16 nominations for best picture, director and screenplay, along with a “dark horse” nomination for Oakland’s Delroy Lindo for best supporting actor.

Coogler has indeed rewritten Academy Awards history with “Sinners,” an R-rated, genre-defying film that was a critical and commercial hit, as well what he himself described as his most personal and ambitious film yet. Prior to Thursday, three films in the Academy Award’s 98-year history had managed to score 14 nominations: “All About Eve” in 1950, “Titanic” in 1997 and “La La Land” in 2016. Trailing “Sinners” in number of nominations was Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another,” which received a total of 13.

Among the other nominations for “Sinners” was a nod to star Michael B. Jordan, who collaborated with Coogler on “Fruitvale Station,” “Creed” and “Black Panther.”

Jordan plays flashy twin brothers in the film, World War I veterans with a shared criminal past, who return to their Mississippi hometown in the Deep South in 1932. During a packed 24-hour period, the brothers, “Smoke” and “Stack,” use money stolen from Chicago criminal syndicates to purchase a sawmill with the dream of starting a juke joint for the local Black community. But amid warnings about the sins of blues music, they soon find themselves confronting a supernatural evil.

In the film, Lindo plays Delta Slim, an old town harmonica player and musical legend. The London-born actor has long made the Bay Area his home, after studying acting at the American Conservatory Theater and becoming associated with Berkeley Repertory Theatre. Another acting nomination, in the best supporting actress category, went to Wunmi Mosaku, who plays Annie, Smoke’s estranged wife and a Hoodoo practitioner.

RELATED: Oscars 2026: Full list of nominees

Coogler, who also attended Saint Mary’s College in Moraga before earning his undergraduate degree at Sacramento State and his MFA in film at USC, scored personal nominations for best director, best original screenplay and for producing “Sinners.” His film additionally scored nominations for casting; production design; cinematography; costume design; film editing; makeup and hairstyling; sound; visual effects; original score; and original song for “I Lied to You.”

In terms of Coogler’s personal achievements with “Sinners,” he becomes only the second Black filmmaker nominated in the same year for producing, directing and original screenplay, following Jordan Peele’s triple recognition for “Get Out” in 2017,  according to Variety. He also is the seventh Black director to receive a best director nomination, following John Singleton, “Boyz n the Hood,”  Lee Daniels for “Precious,” Steve McQueen, for “12 Years a Slave,” Barry Jenkins for “Moonlight,” Jordan Peele and Spike Lee for “BlacKkKlansman” in 2018. None of those directors won.

But perhaps Coogler will rewrite history in other ways by winning the best director prize, and for a film that was very much his personal conception. In an interview with this news organization last April, Coogler said “Sinners” was inspired by his memories of hanging out with an uncle, who grew up in Mississippi, while listening to the blues in their Oakland home. Coogler said he couldn’t help but soak up the music, the mood and the stories he heard from his Uncle James.

“(My uncle) came West and worked at a steel factory and we’d listen to blues records,” Coogler recalled in the interview. “That was like his pasttime. That, and he was a San Francisco Giants fan. We’d watch games on TV and if they weren’t on TV we’d listen to them on the radio. It was Giants and blues music and Old Taylor Whiskey.”

To make “Sinners,” Coogler said he wanted to surround himself with people whom he respected and with whom he had collaborated before, including Jordan.

“I wanted to make something great and I felt like I was running out of time to be able to give myself so completely (over) to a project that was so personal,” he said. “I felt like all my collaborators were getting older and…our lives were becoming more complicated and I just had this instinct that now was the time. It was like now or never. Like (making) something this bold and crazy with all the people I loved and trusted.”

Like Coogler, those collaborators also scored Oscar nominations Thursday: Costume designer Ruth E. Carter (a previous two-time winner for Coogler’s “Black Panther” and “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever”; director of photography Autumn Durald Arkapaw (who also made Oscars history as the first woman of color to be nominated for best cinematography); production designer Hannah Beachler, also a previous Oscar winner for “Black Panther”; editor Michael P. Shawver; and composer  Ludwig Göransson, a past two-time Oscar winner for “Black Panther” and “Oppenheimer.”