Ryan Coogler Pitched ‘Sinners’ to Michael B Jordan Earlier Than He Meant To

It’s hard not to be excited about a screenplay you are working on. Excitement can be a great motivator, and it takes some genuine enthusiasm for what you’re working on to even finish it. That said, you don’t want to put the cart before the horse. The idea you are working on may not turn out to be that good, or you may never even end up finishing it. And that can be said about almost any script, even if it’s one that gets turned into something like Sinners.

I’m still making my way through a lot of movies from 2025. Like, I just saw Sorry, Baby the other night (which was excellent). Regardless, I think I can say with some certainty that Sinners was my favorite film of last year. It was scary, sexy, emotional, and continues Ryan Coogler on a path of excellence that will hopefully last for decades to come. Seeing such an authentic voice flourish before your eyes is a wonderful sight to behold.

Regardless, the man can feel just as anxious as anyone, and didn’t want to jump the gun when pitching his hit film to his friend and frequent collaborator, Michael B. Jordan. We live in the future, so we know that Coogler did end up pitching the movie to his friend, who would go on to play twins in the movie, but Coogler did not want to present the movie to his friend without a finished script. Jordan ended up making that pretty difficult for the director.

“How it ended up working: I was trying to get the screenplay together, ‘cause Mike’s busy, and I didn’t wanna say, ‘Hey, I got a thing,’ and then have him waiting for a script; I didn’t need him blowing my phone up, like, ‘Hey, where it’s at?’ But what ended up happening was he called me and pitched me something while I was working on this for him,” Coogler explained on a recent episode of Amy Poehler’s podcast. “And at first I was like, ‘Mike, I can’t work on that right now.’ And he got upset [laughs], like, ‘Hey man, what’s going on? I wanna get this going. There’s something you’re not telling me.’”

Luckily, Coogler did eventually give in to Jordan, even if it was earlier than he would have liked. “I’m like, ‘Look, I’m working on a thing, I’m bringing this to you, this is what it is: it’s twins, it’s period, it’s vampires,” the director recalled. “And I remember how he reacted ‘cause he just got quiet for a long time [chuckles], and I was like, ‘Oh shit, did I lose him?’ And he’s like, ‘Man, you know what, that sounds pretty interesting, man.’” Thank goodness for good collaborations!

Someone like Ryan Coogler has earned a bit of confidence when it comes to pitching his ideas, but it is still comforting to know that he has to deal with the occasional bout of self doubt like we all do. Thankfully, he’s got someone like Michael B. Jordan by his side to see his vision and help him get it to the finish line.