Ryan Coogler originally planned Sinners on "down-and-dirty" Super 16mm

In its final form, Sinners was the first film shot on both IMAX film and Ultra Panavision 70.

By Emma Keates | April 18, 2025 | 3:21pm

Photo: Eli Adé/Warner Bros. Entertainment

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Ryan Coogler originally planned Sinners on

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Ryan Coogler’s Sinners is massive in both scope and ambition, but it was originally conceived as a “down-and-dirty movie,” as he told Business Insider in a recent interview. When Coogler first started developing his Jim Crow-era vampire tale, he planned to shoot it on Super 16mm like his 2013 film Fruitvale Station. (That film also starred Michael B. Jordan, who leads Sinners twice over as identical twins Smoke and Stack.) “But this was before I went to Mississippi and really learned about the story I was telling,” Coogler continued. “During that time I realized the story has to be epic and mythic.”

Everything clicked when Warner Bros. executive Jesse Ehrman asked if the Black Panther director had considered shooting large format. “He was asking from a business sense, seeing how complicated it’s become to convince folks to come out of their house and watch something that’s original. So he was thinking about it from that side,” Coogler explained. “But as soon as he said that, it unlocked something in me. It was the missing link to what the movie needed.”

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In the end, the team decided to shoot on a combination of IMAX film and the even less commonly used Ultra Panavision 70 format (most recently seen in Quentin Tarantino’s 2015 film The Hateful Eight), meaning that certain scenes have different aspect ratios. (Coogler walks fans through what this means in practice in a pretty fascinating video for Kodak.) “We’re using these two formats for the very first time,” Coogler said, per AP. “It really complements the story, it really complements the setting and it really complements the filmmaking.” It also landed the film—and cinematographer Autumn Durald Arkapaw—another historic first. AP reports that Sinners marks the first time a female director of photography has ever shot a movie on large format IMAX film. “I think for us females in business, the more women are able to shoot on large format, it will inspire the younger girls who maybe don’t think that they can get there,” Arkapaw said.

Coogler has always had a particular penchant for film. “That’s the format that I fell in love with when I was in film school,” he said in the Kodak video. While this was his first time shooting on IMAX, it may not be his last. “I loved the experience,” he told Business Insider. “I think it’s something I could see myself definitely doing in the future. It’s incredibly addictive.”