{"id":418899,"date":"2026-01-20T14:58:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-20T14:58:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/418899\/"},"modified":"2026-01-20T14:58:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-20T14:58:07","slug":"ryan-coogler-on-first-phone-call-pitching-sinners-to-michael-b-jordan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/418899\/","title":{"rendered":"Ryan Coogler On First Phone Call Pitching Sinners To Michael B. Jordan"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tNow a resounding box office success with over $368 million grossed worldwide following glowing critic reviews, Sinners<\/a> seems poised to be nominated for the Oscars multiple times over. But at the beginning of the pitching process to star Michael B. Jordan<\/a>, filmmaker Ryan Coogler<\/a> initially thought his Great Depression-era vampire epic \u2014 about twin brothers who open up a juke joint in the Southern heartland of Mississippi \u2014 was striking the wrong chord.<\/p>\n

\n\tOn a recent appearance of Good Hang with Amy Poehler<\/a>, the two-time Academy Award nominee hilariously recalled the initial phone conversation between himself and frequent collaborator Jordan.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cHow it ended up working: I was trying to get the screenplay together, \u2019cause Mike\u2019s busy, and I didn\u2019t wanna say, \u2018Hey, I got a thing,\u2019 and then have him waiting for a script; I didn\u2019t need him blowing my phone up, like, \u2018Hey, where it\u2019s at?\u2019 But what ended up happening was he called me and pitched me something while I was working on this for him,\u201d the Fruitvale Station writer-director explained. \u201cAnd at first I was like, \u2018Mike, I can\u2019t work on that right now.\u2019 And he got upset [laughs], like, \u2018Hey man, what\u2019s going on? I wanna get this going. There\u2019s something you\u2019re not telling me.’\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe continued, \u201cI\u2019m like, \u2018Look, I\u2019m working on a thing, I\u2019m bringing this to you, this is what it is: it\u2019s twins, it\u2019s period, it\u2019s vampires. And I remember how he reacted \u2019cause he just got quiet for a long time [chuckles], and I was like, \u2018Oh shit, did I lose him?\u2019 And he\u2019s like, \u2018Man, you know what, that sound pretty interesting, man.’\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAfterward, Coogler said he finished the script \u2014 which you can read here<\/a> \u2014 and got it to the actor. Elsewhere in the podcast, the Black Panther helmer discussed the extensive drafting process, showing iterations of the screenplay to producing partner and wife Zinzi Coolger and later Sev Ohanian, his longtime business partner who also produced the film via the trio\u2019s Proximity Media.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Now a resounding box office success with over $368 million grossed worldwide following glowing critic reviews, Sinners seems…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":418900,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[236,88,18924,41717,21959,5251],"class_list":{"0":"post-418899","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-celebrities","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-michael-b-jordan","11":"tag-ryan-coogler","12":"tag-sinners","13":"tag-warner-bros"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418899","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=418899"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418899\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/418900"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=418899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=418899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=418899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}