What Ryan Coogler’s ‘Sinners’ success does and doesn’t mean for Hollywood

Ryan Coogler’s “Sinners” represents many things that moviegoers and people who work in the entertainment industry say they want more often. It’s an original film with a big movie star and a singular director who was able to wrangle lots of money and freedom from one of the industry’s biggest studios.

Most importantly, it’s a hit.

The $90-million horror film starring Michael B. Jordan grossed $48 million in ticket sales in the U.S. and Canada ($63.5 million, including international box office) during its opening weekend, exceeding expectations and unseating “A Minecraft Movie” from the top of the charts.

The back-to-back success of “Minecraft” and “Sinners” has given Warner Bros. studio chiefs Michael De Luca and Pam Abdy some breathing room as they try to lead the storied Burbank-based studio through a daunting recovery period following flops including “Mickey 17” and “Joker: Folie à Deux.”

It’s a bright spot for an industry that has been struggling to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, even as Broadway and concerts bounce back. “Sinners” has stellar reviews, an “A” CinemaScore (the first for a horror movie) and viral momentum online, so it should have a long and healthy run.

And yet some film business insiders have been acting less than enthused, driving people including Ben Stiller to critique trade coverage that described the results as anything less than a resounding achievement.

A widely shared Vulture article from last week highlighted the unusual nature of Coogler’s pact for the film. In the midst of a bidding war between multiple studios, Coogler’s reps demanded a significant budget, final cut and a percentage of the theatrical box-office gross (as opposed to having to wait for the studio to break even).

Those are favorable terms for a filmmaker these days. But the most interesting element, previously reported by Puck, was that the rights to the picture are set to revert to Coogler after 25 years. Senior executives at rival studios, speaking anonymously to Vulture, sounded the alarm that this will catch on, with one saying it set a “very dangerous” precedent that “could be the end of the studio system.”

That’s a bit hyperbolic.

These types of deal terms are not necessarily unheard of, but they are quite rare. For “Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood,” Quentin Tarantino got Sony Pictures’ Tom Rothman to agree to a deal that would send the copyright back after 30 years, a model inherited from the “Pulp Fiction” director’s Miramax and Weinstein Co. days. But two examples hardly make a trend.

Even if asking for rights reversion becomes more prevalent, that perk would likely be reserved for the most exceptional filmmakers.

Coogler has a track record of commercial and critical success, parlaying his 2013 Sundance Film Festival breakout “Fruitvale Station” into the heavyweight class of franchise directors with “Creed” and “Black Panther.” Selling tickets while keeping your artistic identity is a rare feat, and Warner Bros. naturally wants to be in business with Coogler, not to mention his frequent collaborator Jordan. If the studio is willing to overpay, there’s good reason to.

It’s clearly a testament to the value of talent such as Coogler and Tarantino (a two-time Oscar winner).

Coogler himself told Indiewire that he wouldn’t necessarily demand to take back the rights on future titles, but that for a movie like “Sinners,” about Black men starting their own business in a sharecropping community, it made sense. (Warner Bros. retains first and last right of negotiation to distribute “Sinners” after the 25-year mark, according to a studio source.)

Further, giving up the rights to a film after 25 years might not be as much of a sacrifice as it seems, according to insiders who spoke to The Times. Yes, film libraries have value and drive steady revenue. They’re often a major factor in the valuations of acquisitions including Amazon’s purchase of MGM Studios and Skydance’s takeover of Paramount. That’s not nothing. But the added financial value of a movie is usually marginal after a quarter-century has passed.

In a streaming era that’s largely about attracting and retaining subscribers, a few older movies are unlikely to move the needle. If you open up Netflix, for example, how many of the featured film titles are more than 25 years old? There are plenty of older series that streamers covet, but shows such as “Seinfeld” and “Friends” have hundreds of episodes that keep viewers coming back.

One producer who spoke anonymously estimated that movies tend to monetize most of their value within five to 10 years.

Nonetheless, Coogler’s deal may be the latest sign of a broader change in media and entertainment. Former studio executive Doug Shapiro argued in a social media post that, as technology disrupts the industry’s “intermediaries” such as studios, record labels and publishers, more bargaining power is shifting toward top talent.

The practice of allowing rights to go back to top-tier artists after a certain amount of time is already well established in the music industry, and has spread beyond just the biggest acts, said Bill Hochberg, a veteran music and media lawyer at Raines Feldman Littrell LLP in Los Angeles. But don’t expect it to become the norm anytime soon for movies, where there’s more at stake financially.

“Rights reversion has become common in the music industry for recording artists, who often have leverage to get their rights back after a few years, and so it’s not surprising to see this trending for A-list film talent,” Hochberg said. “It shows how the music biz is sometimes a step ahead of the film biz. But I think it will be some time before the film industry adopts rights reversions as broadly as the music business has.”

For Warner Bros., neither “Sinners” nor “Minecraft” solve all of the company’s problems, but they each help the studio regain its footing after a rough few months. Warner Bros. said it was the first time since 2009 that two movies from the same studio grossed more than $40 million on the same weekend (using numbers not adjusted for inflation).

The biggest test for the Warner Bros. regime will come with July’s release of “Superman,” written and directed by DC Studios co-head James Gunn. The company also has to worry about Paul Thomas Anderson’s upcoming Leonardo DiCaprio film “One Battle After Another,” which carries a reported $130 million production budget before marketing costs.

But if franchise-type films like “Minecraft,” “Superman” and “The Batman” keep working, it gives De Luca and Abdy the ability to take more chances on filmmaker-driven projects. You know, the types of films everyone complains that Hollywood doesn’t make anymore.

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