The time it takes to produce a feature film can span studio heads, a pivot to streaming and a merger or two.
As original movies take longer and longer to work their way through the studio machinery, the pace of change at studios, from strategies and shifting priorities, has sped up. Even the most veteran filmmakers have been entrapped in that antagonistic push and pull.
Sinners, the latest from filmmaker Ryan Coogler, landed at Warner Bros. at the top of 2024. A year and some change later, is hitting theaters this weekend. As for how Coogler ended up anomalously pushing his movie through a post-pandemic, post-strikes entertainment industry in what amounts to land speed record timing, that’s a longer story.
Coogler’s path from Sundance Film Festival wunderkind to seasoned blockbuster filmmaker is well known. In a sentence: The indie debut Fruitvale Station led to a shot as resuscitating a dormant franchise (2015’s Creed) that then begat his own $2 billion-grossing Marvel Studios franchise (Black Panther and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever). Lesser known is his work as a producer under his Proximity Media banner, which he founded with Sev Ohanian and Zinzi Coogler.
“We met when we were 13 or 14. When you are in a relationship with someone for that long, you pull each other into each other’s lives,” Zinzi recently told The Hollywood Reporter. Zinzi worked as an ASL interpreter at a deaf advocacy non-profit in the Cooglers’ native Bay Area, while helping whenever she could on student films and, eventually, Fruitvale. (A well-worn anecdote is that Zinzi was the one who first bought Coogler the screenwriting software Final Draft to help him pursue his filmmaking career.)
While continuing to work as an interpreter on film sets like A Wrinkle in Time, Zinzi observed and advised Coogler, whom she married in 2016, on his projects as the sound stages and budgets got progressively bigger. Zinzi says with a laugh, “He would often invite me into the most inappropriate meetings and places. From being in all of his classes at school to being on sets to being in rooms when he’s making deals with studio heads.”
Coogler notes that many filmmakers he admires have worked with their significant others.
“I remember having a meeting with Zack Snyder at one point, and his wife [Deborah Snyder] was there running his stuff. And I had a meeting with J.J. [Abrams] and his wife [Katie McGrath] was there running their stuff,” says Coogler. “And I was like, ‘Oh no, I’m doing this shit completely wrong.’ Then we met Chris [Nolan] and Emma [Thomas] in 2015. When we went to go down at meet with them, that’s when I started hard selling Zinzi.”
As for Ohanian, he first met Coogler as students at the University of Southern California’s lauded film program, eventually crashing on the Cooglers’ couch as he produced Fruitvale. After being separated for several subsequent projects, while in post on Black Panther, the Cooglers attended the San Francisco premiere of Ohanian’s 2018 feature Searching. Over dinner at a Peruvian restaurant on the waterfront, the trio decided to join forces for Proximity Media.
Now in its seventh year, Proximity’s work has since spanned TV (Marvel’s upcoming Wakanda Forever spinoff Ironheart) and non-fiction (Stephen Curry: Underrated), as well as award winners with 2021’s Judas and the Black Messiah netting two Oscars.
“With the pandemic and the strikes, we could feel a gap where we could make something for people that is surprising. When things get as shitty as they’ve been, the natural response for a Fortune 500 corporation is to mitigate all risk. I could feel the safe, stable movies coming,” says Coogler. “From a business standpoint, I totally understand, but from an audience standpoint, it bums me the fuck out.”
It was at this point, with industry instability at its highest it has been since he began his filmmaking career, that Coogler began writing his blues-centric, supernatural period piece set in a juke joint in the Jim Crow South that is beset upon by vampires.
“I felt the clock was ticking on us in terms of being able to give ourselves completely to a project like this,” says Coogler. The Proximity partners and their close collaborators’ lives outside of work were becoming more involved, there were now kids and other priorities: “Some of us have minivans now!” It had been over a decade, but it felt like the jump from film school students to in-demand talent booked out years in advance had crept up on them.
“I didn’t want to look up and be 50 and not have made this,” reasoned the director. “I only got so long before Kevin Feige calling me, like, ‘Hey, what’s up?’”
So, at the top of last year, Proximity took Sinners to market.
On offer was a successful, reliable filmmaker with his first original spec since his stand-out debut. And the producers weren’t just coming to the table with a draft, but a ready-made team of past collaborators. Ruth Carter, the famed costume designer who won an Oscar for her work on Black Panther, was already on board, as was cinematographer Autumn Arkapaw (Wakanda Forever) and, of course, Michael B. Jordan was attached to star — as twins, no less.
Ludwig Göransson, the Academy Award-winning composer and Proximity co-founder, was ideating the film’s music before the screenplay was done.
“We all knew that Ryan was writing scenes with music, and [Sev and Zinzi] were like, ‘Okay, we want to shoot this as soon as possible. Is it possible to have the song ready in three months?’ Normally, probably not.” Making original music involves writing and composing the songs and teaching them to the onscreen talent, but, says Göransson, “because we do have a rapport with each other, I was like, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll just figure it out.’”
The request to studios was simple, if not daunting. Says Coogler, “We are happy to make it with any of you guys, but we’ve got to go. Now.”
For a successful filmmaker or talent starting a production company, the supposed next step is usually to find a home base with a studio deal. Proximity notably has maintained its free agent status, not signing an overall deal in film. (In TV, the studio has a pact with 20th Century.)
“Going all the way back to Fruitvale, we were so young and there wasn’t a day on that movie where somebody wouldn’t out of kindness say, ‘Hey, this is actually not how things are usually done,’” says Ohanian. “If we’re not doing something industry standard, maybe we’re finding a different way to do it, and it might be just as good.”
Coogler adds that if he had an overall deal, Sinners would not have come to fruition so quickly.
“We had a competitive market,” Coogler says. “A lot of folks wanted to make this movie, thankfully, and that’s what enabled us to have the timeline as one of the [deal] points.”
In addition to the truncated timeline, another deal point was ownership: Coogler would reclaim the rights to his film after 25 years. (Quentin Tarantino struck a deal with Sony for Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood that sees his ownership stake in the movie increase every year for 20 years, when the movie reverts to him.) The filmmaker has talked about the deal being a one-off for Sinners, a film centered on a story about Black ownership.
And, if nothing else, over $2 billion in ticket sales for his movies is a solid proof of concept.
Studios and streamers descended on the offices of WME, where hopeful bidders were required to travel if they wanted to hear the pitch and read the script. Maybe the greatest testament of Coogler and company is that they were able to get studio executives to willfully drive into Beverly Hills mid-week. In the end, Warners won out over fellow finalist Universal.
Four weeks after the first draft hit Zinzi and Ohanian’s inbox, Proximity picked up cameras for Sinners. Production filmed on location in Louisiana, with a budget of $90 million (multiple reports, including those in THR, place the final budget higher). Heading into theaters this weekend, Sinners has already paid off, at least critically. It has bowed to universal praise from critics, with near-perfect scores across review aggregators, with THR saying Sinners has “enough thematic layers and genre fluidity to fuel at least three movies.”
And while Sinners is a big swing for Proximity, it also has implications for the industry at large. The movie is seen as a bellwether for the tenure of Warner Bros film chiefs Pam Abdy and Mike De Luca, who have incurred the awe and ire of Hollywood by building a slate of big-budget features from big-name talent. It also comes in a year where original stories — movies not based on IP or a part of a pre-existing franchise — are failing to get audiences into theaters.
But if Sinners hits, it will be far from the first time Coogler and his producers have defied the odds.
Says Zinzi, “Knowing that Ryan’s tenacity and the way he works, there was a trust in him that he would deliver on this impossible task. That is how we got here. It wasn’t by accident.”
