Ryan Coogler is a true cinephile, so much so that he found inspiration for Sinners in one of the unlikeliest of sources: an animated movie.
While speaking with Get Rec’d with Straw Hat Goofy on YouTube, Coogler admitted that Puss in Boots: The Last Wish played an integral role in shaping the villain of Sinners.
“So I talk about influences on this movie right here, Sinners,” Coogler said. “That’s [Puss in Boots: The Last Wish] a massive one.”
While the titular cat gets most of the notoriety, Coogler focused on the film’s villain, the Wolf, who eventually reveals himself as Death. Coogler zeroed in on Death’s red eyes, which he applied to Sinners’ evil characters, including Jack O’Connell’s Remick.
“Think about the villain Death, think about his defining features [the eyes], think about his demeanor,” said Coogler of Death’s influence on Sinners.
Coogler also credited Louis Gonzales, a long-time animator for Pixar, for storyboarding these critical elements of Sinners.
Sinners is the fifth film to be written and directed by Coogler. Michael B. Jordan stars as twin brothers Smoke and Stack, who return to their hometown for a fresh start in the southern United States during the 1930s. However, their homecoming is derailed when they discover an “even greater evil” waiting for them in the town.
Sinners also stars Hailee Steinfeld, Miles Caton, Wunmi Mosaku, Jayme Lawson, Omar Benson Miller, Li Jun Li, and Delroy Lindo.
Sinners has been described as a supernatural horror with vampiric and musical elements. Made on a budget of $100 million, Sinners is expected to make between $30 million and $40 million domestically during its opening weekend (via Box Office Theory).
Warner Bros. will release Sinners in theaters on April 18.
Some of the best shots in Grok Imagine’s AI-made Odyssey don’t contain actors. Ancient landscapes stretch into the distance. Close-ups of grimy hands suggest people who have touched something rougher than a keyboard. For a few seconds, the illusion holds.
https://twitter.com/imagine/status/2113712964419063911
YouTube videos could soon look better without eating quite so much data, right? Thankfully, the platform plans to introduce a new video format called AV2 on its web player in early 2027, promising more efficient streaming and potentially fewer playback hiccups on slower internet connections. The big headline is a roughly 30% improvement in compression efficiency over AV1, YouTube's existing video format. That doesn't guarantee every video will use 30% less data, but it could make streaming a little easier on both internet connections and data allowances.
What is AV2, and why should viewers care?
YouTube is changing how its Home page works, giving viewers more control over what shows up there and making some of the app’s most-used sections easier to reach. Custom Feeds are now replacing the existing topic chips for eligible users, while YouTube is also testing a redesigned top bar on mobile that moves Subscriptions closer to the Home feed.
YouTube first started experimenting with Custom Feeds earlier this year, letting you type out what you wanted to watch and turning that request into its own stream of recommendations. Now, the feature is starting to look less like a side experiment and more like something YouTube actually wants people to use as part of their everyday Home page.