What The Hell America!

The director Ryan Coogler’s new film, Sinners, had an impressive first weekend for an industry that’s been wanting good news. It topped the box office with $48 million nationwide, ahead of the Minecraft movie, 2025’s biggest earner domestically thus far. That sum stands as the highest opening gross for an original feature since the coronavirus pandemic upended Hollywood. Numbers aside, Sinners’ resonance with theatergoers should give both champions of inventive art and Hollywood writ large a reason to celebrate—especially after a recent spate of box-office disappointments. Audiences not only will still go to the multiplex, the ticket sales suggest; they’re also willing to see something that’s not part of a preexisting franchise.

Viewers might not understand how well Sinners is doing from reading about it, though. Numerous stories about its debut have focused on why the movie’s distributor, Warner Bros., still can’t call the film a smash. The Hollywood Reporter deemed its price tag “relatively hefty for a genre movie.” A New York Times article noted that Sinners’ box-office success came with a “big asterisk,” and that “to make money, Sinners will need to attract substantial crowds in the weeks ahead.” Variety emphasized that, because Sinners cost “a staggering $90 million to produce,” the movie’s “profitability remains a question mark.” That skeptical framing raised numerous eyebrows, with even Ben Stiller—who didn’t work on the film—flagging it on social media: “In what universe does a 60 million dollar opening for an original studio movie warrant this headline?” he posted, referring to the film’s global box-office earnings.

Of course, the job of entertainment-business reporters is to cover Hollywood, and companies’ financials are a vital part of that ecosystem. Profitability—the point at which a film’s investors begin to see returns—is also of the utmost importance to studio bigwigs, sometimes to movie-lovers’ chagrin. (The rule of thumb is that a studio will start recouping its spending when a film makes back double its budget, which includes production and marketing spend.) And it’s true that, for a non-franchise feature, a $90 million budget is significant. Yet the forcefulness of the conversation about Sinners is striking. Usually, such an unambiguous accomplishment—especially for a horror film, a polarizing genre with audiences—prompts a victory lap on Monday, when box-office figures are confirmed, and Coogler thanked “each and every one of you who bought a ticket” in a letter posted to social media. Much of the press about the film’s money-making potential, meanwhile, seemed intent on turning down the volume, taking what should be one of the year’s biggest cinematic success stories and focusing on the potential for failure instead of its concrete achievement thus far.

Read: Ryan Coogler didn’t want to hide anymore

There have been other, less grumpy interpretations of Sinners’ price tag: Deadline was more bullish, reminding readers that the film’s higher-end cost was “what it takes to be in business with auteurs who have delivered recent blockbusters on their resume.” Each of Coogler’s prior movies has been celebrated—most notably Black Panther and its sequel, which made a combined $2.21 billion worldwide. It should hardly be surprising, based on that track record, that Coogler’s new film inspired a bidding war among studios. In order to acquire Sinners, Warner Bros. even agreed to revert the rights back to the director after 25 years, an unusual (although not unheard-of) proviso.

This filmmaker-friendly behavior seems to have spooked some members of Hollywood. A New York report published alongside Sinners’ release anonymously quoted multiple executives, who called Warner Bros.’ agreement with Coogler “dangerous”; one added that it “could be the end of the studio system.” Part of many studios’ revenue generation comes from licensing out their back catalog, and a hit such as Sinners could become a valuable asset. Another source worried that other A-list filmmakers would start to demand similar terms regarding ownership: “It’s bad for the business. It’s bad for filmmaking relationships.” But Coogler has said that he wanted the rights for symbolic reasons—that it felt important to him, as a Black director, to own his film about Black autonomy. The director shouldn’t have to justify the terms he secured for Sinners regardless; he got the best deal for himself in a competitive market for his services. That’s how the business is meant to work.

The undercurrent to this kind of coverage is troubling: that Sinners was somehow not worthy of a large budget, or that Coogler didn’t deserve a creatively enriching deal. Perhaps these beliefs stem from the fact that the movie isn’t attached to a franchise; spending nearly $100 million on a known quantity tends to be a safer bet for a company. Or maybe it’s because some of the industry has become pessimistic about original, auteur-driven movies. Analysts have cited new, low-grossing features by Oscar-winning directors such as Steven Soderbergh (Black Bag) and Bong Joon Ho (Mickey 17) as evidence that supporting artier efforts comes with consequences. But the directors of such films aren’t unilaterally responsible for balancing the books; in the case of Sinners, given its current trajectory, worrying about the math doesn’t seem necessary.

Nonetheless, even a genuine critical and commercial smash is no match for Hollywood’s financial anxiety. Major studios have grown gun-shy about funding anything remotely risky; even a risk well taken can prompt a knee-jerk, scornful reaction from not only the executives but also the press: The film could, even should, have done better. That bias is worth interrogating—except I doubt anyone in the boardrooms will bother to do that.

Read: Why the studios are risking everything

This money talk should not matter to the audiences who show up for movies like Sinners. But there’s a chance that they’ll start to think that it should, considering how much of the coverage revolves around costs and break-even points. Even seemingly guaranteed blockbusters, such as Marvel movies, have their box-office numbers scrutinized, as financials become a primary media talking point. The chatter about new movies is in danger of heading in the wrong direction: away from whether a movie is worth seeing, and toward whether a supposed underperformer can claw its money back. Sinners should clearly be understood as a hit, but the defeatist coverage threatens to warp moviegoers’ understanding of box-office success—and whether achieving it is actually possible.