A Sinematic Universe?

"Sinners" is a bonafide original hit. Will it spawn a franchise?

“Sinners.” (Warner Bros.)

• Ryan Coogler’s “Sinners” is blowing up the box office, with over $120 million domestically so far.

• Coogler has said he hasn’t thought about a sequel, but some fans are already debating the merits of potential follow ups.

• Hollywood is in desperate need of new franchises, but it’s exciting to see an original, post-pandemic genre hit where we don’t know what might come next.

This post contains minor spoilers for “Sinners.”

After a few days of distress over what qualifies as a “hit” or what makes a film “profitable,” there is officially no denying that director Ryan Coogler’s “Sinners” is a bonafide box-office sensation.

The movie dropped just 6% over the weekend from its opening, earning another $45 million and bringing its domestic total to $122 million (it’s grossed over $160 million globally). That’s what strong word of mouth gets you, foreshadowed by an A Cinemascore, unheard of for an R-rated horror movie.

Now the same Hollywood news outlets that were questioning the movie’s path to success are estimating that it could end its run north of $300 million (for those that care, it probably needed roughly $250 million to be “profitable” at the box office).

Success in Hollywood typically sparks questions of how to milk the product for all its worth, and I’ve already noticed conversations online about whether “Sinners” should or shouldn’t start a franchise. Some fans want to see what happened to Stack and Mary in the time between the main story and the movie’s mid-credits epilogue, for instance. Or they’ve theorized that the Native Americans in the movie are werewolves, and are craving more on that. Others see the film as almost sacred; why ruin a good thing with sequels, prequels, spinoffs, and that sort of ilk? Let Coogler tackle another original story and keep the hits coming.

“Sinners” is a big enough hit where he’ll be able to do whatever he wants to do next, if he didn’t already have that ability. “Sinners” is a personal passion project for him; it’s the main reason he fought for a unique deal with the studio, Warner Bros., where the rights to the movie will revert back to him after 25 years. Only he knows whether he would ever want to sink his teeth back into the world of “Sinners.”

A recent interview with Ebony, in which he said he “never thinks about” a sequel, indicates he’s in no rush.

“I’ve been in a space of making franchise films for a bit, so I wanted to get away from that," he said "I was looking forward to working on a film that felt original and personal to me and had an appetite for delivering something to audiences that was original and unique."

For what it’s worth, I’m not expecting there to be a sequel or prequel to “Sinners,” let alone rampant followups, nor do I think it necessarily needs any. But there is enough meat on the bone there if Coogler came back to it. This kind of movie, an original story where the world and characters already feel so lived in and that demands so much discussion about the potential lore and themes, seems so rare in Hollywood today.

After all, I’ve written at length about how the movie business is in desperate need of new franchises to support the future, as the old guard — from Transformers to Fast and Furious to even the MCU — run their course. Audiences have shown an appetite for fresh stories on the big screen post-pandemic, but “Sinners” is the first big post-pandemic hit that is a purely original story (it had the biggest opening weekend for an original movie since before the pandemic); “Barbie,” “Oppenheimer,” “Wicked,” “Super Mario Bros.,” “A Minecraft Movie” — all adaptations or driven by IP of some kind.

It’s exciting to see a movie spark this much excitement and not know what might come next, if anything.

Of course, plenty of Hollywood’s best or biggest franchises started somewhere. From decade-spanning franchises like Star Wars to more recent ones like John Wick, they grew off the success of that first film. Original horror movies, like “Sinners,” in particular have spawned successful franchises this century, from “Saw” to “The Conjuring” to “A Quiet Place” (I think “Sinners” is a better movie than any of those, to be fair).

And there are a lot of ways to milk a hit in less obvious ways than prequels, sequels, or spinoffs. There’s the surprise “sequel,” like “Split” to “Unbreakable.” There’s the “spiritual” sequel, like “The Color of Money” to “Hustler,” or more recently “10 Cloverfield Lane” to “Cloverfield.”

No matter what, again, there’s no rush. We can all bask in this moment and enjoy “Sinners” in all its glory right here, right now. After all, there’s something to be said for that “Sinners” second weekend drop I mentioned; it’s the smallest dip for a movie that made over $40 million in its first weekend since “Avatar,” the highest-grossing movie of all time. And it took 13 years for a sequel to that.

Beyond the Traverse

🤠 Bloomberg profiled Paramount’s Chris McCarthy, the man behind the “Yellowstone” franchise (that isn’t Taylor Sheridan).

🦸‍♂️ Warner Bros. beat a lawsuit over Superman rights, meaning it can release the new movie in the UK, Canada, and more international markets.

📺 Max is building momentum by becoming HBO again.