Business Insider: You’ve spoken about “Sinners” being a love letter to your grandfather and uncle.
How did you go from celebrating family to vampires and the blues?
Ryan Coogler:I never knew my grandfather.
He died shortly after my parents got married.
He was from Mississippi.
Born there, raised there.
Then he moved to Oakland and married my grandmother who was from Texas.
So if you went and spent time with him he was doing one or all three of those things.
I loved my uncle.
I associate that music with him.
And that is why the movie is so personal.
The idea of Black ownership motivated you, correct?
That was the reason for that ask.
That was actually the only motivation.
Do you have the rights to any of your other movies?
Is this a first time for you?
It’s the first time.
It was this specific project.
How long had you been thinking about doing that?
So it existed in every form of the screenplay but it was a concept that came to be.
Like, it wasn’t in the outline.
Was that sequence always ambitious from the start?
The ambition evolved as I was researching it and digging into it.
I realized the epic nature of the story as I researched it.
At first, I thought it was small.
We are still making incarnations of that music.
And so my mind kind of blew up and I saw the movie showing that creation.
That’s not the whole reason.
We wanted to make film prints but we also wanted to make the movie in the best way possible.
We actually did this fast.
Are you concerned about shooting on film going forward?
There are definitely fewer labs than there were 10 or even five years ago.
There are enough filmmakers who believe in the format that I have faith.
I actually hope there’s a resurgence.
My first movie, “Fruitvale Station,” was shot on film.
It was shot on Super 16mm, so the format has always mattered to me.
And I was so happy to get back to it.
But with the epic nature of the story, I was also happy to shoot large format.
I was going to ask about shooting on IMAX.
Was that something you thought about doing back in the script stage?
I thought it was going to be a down-and-dirty movie.
Oh, so originally “Sinners” had a grimy, dirty South feel?
But this was before I went to Mississippi and really learned about the story I was telling.
During that time I realized the story has to be epic and mythic.
That’s when an executive at Warner Bros. reached out and asked if I considered large format.
So he was thinking about it from that side.
But as soon as he said that, it unlocked something in me.
It was the missing link to what the movie needed.
I mean, America is a fucking beautiful landscape.
It’s gorgeous, and the natural landscapes totally dictate the people you are interacting with.
The Mississippi Delta felt that way.
The epic feel of that flat pastoral landscape.
Are you hooked on shooting on IMAX cameras going forward?
I loved the experience.
I think it’s something I could see myself definitely doing in the future.
It’s incredibly addictive.
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
“Sinners” is in theaters now.
