'Sinners' Breaks a Box-Office Record with a Dubious Distinction

Sinners is one of the best movies of 2025 and one of the best of the 2020s, elevating Ryan Coogler into the very small group of directors who can be trusted with a large budget to produce and direct an original film. At this point, that list basically includes: Ryan Coogler, Jordan Peele, and Christopher Nolan. It doesn’t even include Steven Spielberg anymore, not that he directs many original films these days.

As of this week, Sinners has earned the dubious distinction of becoming the highest-grossing original film since 2010. It’s an impressive feat, though we all wish the competition for that honor were a little stiffer. With $275 million, it also has a shot at surpassing 2010’s Inception to become the highest-grossing original film of the last two decades. The list is not long. Here’s where it stands (via World of Reel):

Inception (2010): $292 million
Sinners (2025): $275 million
Gravity (2013): $274 million
Dunkirk (2017): $189 million
A Quiet Place (2018): $188 million
Interstellar (2014): $188 million
Get Out (2017): $176 million
Us (2019): $175 million
Bridesmaids (2011): $169 million
The Heat (2013): $159 million
La La Land (2016): $151 million

Interestingly, the list includes two Jordan Peele films, three Nolan films, two Paul Feig films, and two starring Sandra Bullock, and two starring Melissa McCarthy.

You may notice that all the titles, except Sinners, are from the 2010s. That’s because the list of top-grossing original films in the 2020s is bleak:

1. Sinners (2025): $275 million
2. Sound of Freedom (2023): $184 million
3. Elemental (2023): $154 million
4. The Wild Robot (2024): $143 million
5. Migration (2023): $127 million
6. Nope (2022): $123 million
7. Free Guy (2021): $121 million
8. If (2024): $111 million
9. Smile (2022): $105 million
10. The Lost City (2022): $105 million

It’s worth noting that, compared to their budgets, Elemental, Free Guy, and If weren’t even particularly big hits. And Sound of Freedom was crowdfunded and distributed through a company with a history of questionable political affiliations and marketing tactics.

This raises a chicken-and-egg question: Do studios avoid producing original movies because audiences don’t show up? Or do audiences not show up because there are so few original movies to see? Of those ten films, I’d only count Sinners as a great movie, with Nope and Smile being very good (I haven’t seen The Wild Robot, but audiences did seem to love that one).

If Sinners proves anything, it’s that audiences will turn out for a great original film. Many of the others, meanwhile, show that mediocre original movies lead to mediocre box office results. (If also demonstrates that, after A Quiet Place, John Krasinski certainly does not belong in the Nolan, Coogler, or Peele tier.)

It takes time for studios to adjust, so maybe the performance of Sinners will inspire more original productions in two or three years. As for the rest of 2025? A quick scan of the release calendar suggests that there’s possibly one original film left this year with a shot at breaking $100 million domestically: Zach Cregger’s follow-up to Barbarian, Weapons (worth noting: Jordan Peele tried to direct Weapons). Even that’s dependent on it being a great film with strong buzz. Two original hits could move Cregger up to the tier just below Nolan and Peele—though the depressing reality is, he’ll probably use that clout to adapt a Stephen King novel or something.