Ryan Coogler didn’t have to look far when searching for inspiration for his latest film “Sinners.” In fact, he just had to think about his uncle James, a man who meant the world to the “Black Panther” filmmaker.

James was the oldest male member of Coogler’s family for many years and he lived just down the street. As a school-aged kid, Coogler would walk to James’ house. James had married into Coogler’s family, tying the knot with Coogler’s aunt Sammie. (The Sammie in Coogler’s “Sinners” is named after her.) James worked at a steel mill. He loved the San Francisco Giants, Royal Tiger whiskey and the blues. Towards the end of his life, Coogler and James wouldn’t see each other as much. But James would send Coogler encouraging voice messages. He passed away while Coogler was in post-production on “Creed.” James was sick in Philadelphia and Coogler couldn’t get there in time to say goodbye.

But after James passed, the music that he listened to and the music that he shared with Coogler took on a new life.

“I would listen to it and find myself reminiscing about him. It really interrogated the art form of music. Becoming obsessed with that led to this movie,” Coogler told TheWrap in a wide-ranging interview about his $90 million original horror film.

“This movie” is, of course, “Sinners,” where Coogler’s regular collaborator Michael B. Jordan plays twin World War I-vets-turned-bootleggers – Smoke and Stack – who return to their small town in the Jim Crow-era South to open a bluesy juke joint. On the first night of business, they run afoul of a group of vampires, led by Jack O’Connell’s ageless Remmick. It’s not a musical exactly, but the blues is a key part of its DNA, especially since much of the story is told from the perspective of Sammie (newcomer Miles Caton), the son of a local preacher who has a musical mastery that borders on the supernatural.

Coogler has described the movie as his most autobiographical. When we tried to make a connection to his filmmaking career, with Smoke and Stack taking money from a larger city to return home and make something new echoing Coogler’s years making movies for big studios (like the two “Black Panther” movies he made for Marvel Studios) only to return and make a new movie from the heart, the filmmaker laughed and said he’d “never thought of it like that but that’s really interesting.”

The intention behind “Sinners” was to “get together the people who meant a lot to me to make this movie.” Coogler convinced his wife (and the film’s producer) Zinzi, along with collaborators like composer Ludwig Göransson (who also serves as an executive producer), to move their families down to New Orleans for several months in order to shoot the movie. “There was an element of the first half of this movie, it was a real deal,” Coogler said, referring to the first hour of “Sinners” where the twins assemble a makeshift family to help them open the juke joint. Not that it was all fun and games. “We got bit by a lot of mosquitos,” Coogler said. “No vampires though.”

Together, Coogler and Göransson traveled to Memphis and did the Blues Trail, described on the official site as an “unforgettable journey into the land that spawned the single most important root source of modern popular music.” Göransson brought his father, a blues guitar player, who discovered American blues while in Sweden. Göransson’s father bought his first Muddy Waters record when he was 15 or 16. Years later, Göransson got into music when he first heard Metallica. “I didn’t understand the direct lineage that Metallica and heavy metal had from blues. But I think, for me, that’s part of the score for this – that discovery and that lineage and my childhood and connecting with my dad,” Göransson said. “It’s probably my most personal score to date.”

Göransson signed on as an executive producer, in part, because “music is so embedded in the story.” Early on Coogler asked Göransson if he wanted to come onboard as an executive producer, which excited the composer. “I don’t think I understood how much work it was going to be,” Göransson confessed. The Oscar-winning “Oppenheimer” composer spent three months in New Orleans, so he could “be on set and be closer to production.” Göransson would work with the actors during the day, with a lot of the shoot happening at night (or vice-versa); truly he was living a vampiric lifestyle.

“It was a very intense time, because everything was happening so fast, and we wanted real musicians to play music on the set,” Göransson said.

The composer’s score is a twangy mixture of authentic, era-appropriate sounds – the strum of banjos, the twinkling of pianos – that eventually incorporates more modern sounds, like the wail of an electric guitar or the bounce of more modern synthesizers. Göransson is a chameleon, jumping from the Oscar-winning grandeur of his “Oppenheimer” score to the drum-based bombast of “Black Panther” (also Oscar-winning). “Sinners” is his latest shade, just as emotive and hummable as anything else he’s done, but maybe more complex.

Ludwig Goransson (Getty Images)

Stephen King and the luck of the Irish

If the musicality of “Sinners” was inspired by Coogler’s uncle James and enhanced by all of Göransson’s hard work, then the supernatural suspense came from another figure who loomed large in Coogler’s life – Stephen King.

Coogler remembered an anecdote that he attributes to King’s memoir/how-to guide “On Writing” but can be found on King’s official site. King wanted to contemporize “Dracula” and noodled around on the idea with his wife Tabitha. “He’d probably be run over by a Yellow Cab on Park Avenue and killed,” Tabitha told her husband. King thought the idea was dead but he kept thinking about it and soon relocated the ageless vampire to a small town. “Salem’s Lot,” his second published novel, was born. Coogler calls “’Salem’s Lot” “the greatest vampire story I’ve ever read.”

“I’ve always been obsessed with that story – the scene where Barlow is first introduced still makes my blood run cold,” Coogler said. There’s a scene Coogler from the recent animated movie “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish” that encapsulates the feeling of one of his favorite “’Salem’s Lot” scenes – Puss in Boots thinks that the Wolf he’s talking to at a bar is just a bounty hunter “but he realizes he is dealing with something he hasn’t met before.” “I’ve been obsessed with that idea,” Coogler said.

When he started formulating what would become “Sinners,” Coogler thought about this moment – thinking you’re talking to someone familiar, who turns out to be otherworldly. “When it hit me to make this story, it made all the sense in the world to make a to make it a vampire movie,” Coogler said. He wanted O’Connell’s Remmick to be more than a vampire. He wanted him to be a “master vampire,” like Barlow from “’Salem’s Lot.” Or Dracula.

“Something ancient and knowledgeable and powerful and from another world and another time coming to this foundational year in terms of the Delta blues music and walking right into [the movie’s fictional town of] Clarksdale, into this room full of almost mythical characters who think they’ve seen it all, until they met this guy. That was where it came from. You know, it’s basically merging my artistic proclivities with the story I wanted to make about my uncle,” Coogler said.

One would probably jump to the conclusion that Remmick is representing the KKK, still alive and well in the Deep South in the 1930s, but that’s too easy. Instead, he makes a plea to the Black characters – he is an ageless Irish vampire who saw his people get kicked around by the British. “Would you identify with the Klan? Fuck no. You would identify with these people,” Coogler said.

Ryan Coogler and Michael B. Jordan on the set of “Sinners” (Warner Bros.)

As a kid Coogler was obsessed with a Disney Channel movie called “The Luck of the Irish” from 2001. His entire neighborhood was. “It was all Black kids! And we fucking loved this movie. Why is that? What is the crossover effect?” Coogler said. He has pondered this for year. He was also keenly aware that an Irish-American woman changed his life. A teacher, Rosemary Graham, read one of his school assignments and told Coogler, “You should write screenplays.” This is a woman who goes to Ireland twice a year. Coogler started drawing parallels between Irish freedom fighters and the Black panthers. He knew he had to make his vampire Irish. It would also give Coogler and Göransson another musical color to paint with – Irish folk music.

O’Connell’s big moment involves him singing “Rocky Road to Dublin,” which Göransson said was trickier than he imagined. “It’s like an Irish rap song,” Göransson said. “It’s a difficult song to perform and to sing and to dance and for Jack to come in and do that is incredible.” O’Connell was worried about doing the song justice (O’Connell’s dad is Irish) and for him to “make sure that it was true.”

Coogler rattles off a list of additional inspirations for “Sinners” – the sweaty, all-night energy of Martin Scorsese’s “After Hours;” the party vibes of Steve McQueen’s “Lovers Rock” (part of his amazing “Small Axe” film collection); the siege element of John Carpenter’s “Assault on Precinct 13” and the jittery paranoia of “The Thing” (“Big time Carpenter bro,” Coogler said, “It always feels like he’s punching you in the nose”); Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds,” which has a certain historical anachronism shared with Coogler’s film; and the more straightforward Western theatrics of the Coen Brothers’ “No Country for Old Men.”

Perhaps the most surprising touchstone he threw out was Nicolas Roeg’s 1973 masterpiece “Don’t Look Now.” But once he said it, it made perfect sense – there’s a relationship between Smoke and Annie (Wunmi Mosaku) that has been scarred by the loss of a child. It’s a relationship defined, as Coogler said, by “the constant change of grief.” Annie too has a connection to the spiritual world, just like Julie Christie in “Don’t Look Now.” “She is constantly aware of what’s going to happen,” Coogler said. “She knows that him coming home means bad news for everything but she still decides to go with him.” Coogler said he watched the movie before he left to film “Sinners,” and was particularly struck by the sex scene (which Steven Soderbergh also borrowed for “Out of Sight”). And if you’re wondering if he upgraded to the 4K Criterion release, Coogler shot back, “You know I did.”

A unique Warner Bros. deal

One aspect of “Sinners” that has been given particular attention in the press is Warner Bros.’ decision to let the rights to the movie revert to Coogler in 25 years, meaning the filmmaker will own the movie, not the studio. Tarantino worked out a similar deal on “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” but it is incredibly rare.

Most assumed it would be so that Coogler could control a franchise built around “Sinners,” but the filmmaker said that it was “never about that.”

“It was about the subject matter, how personal it was to me. The fact that I got to the point where I could ask for something like that, and other filmmakers get that, was always about the personal nature of the story,” Coogler said. This was a movie inspired by his family, starting with his uncle James. It was something that he admits that he prayed on a lot, hoping that he’d still be around when he got the rights back (Coogler is only 38). Thankfully, he took the “Sinners” package into what he describes as a “competitive marketplace.” “Fortunately, it was something that we were able to get,” Coogler said. A franchise isn’t totally off the table. “But at the same time, we put it all into this one,” Coogler said.

Michael B. Jordan in “Sinners” (Warner Bros.)

If “Sinners” is a hit (and it is shaping up to be one), Coogler would love to make more original movies. Right after the pilot for a new iteration of “The X-Files,” which he is going to write and direct. “This was something special. To think I could repeat a process like this would be foolish,” Coogler said of making “Sinners.”

“If people go out and see this movie and I’m blessed that the studio is interested in working with me again, down to make something original again, I’d love it.”

Göransson is just happy he was able to help make Coogler’s vision a reality. They have been buddies since college and collaborated repeatedly. “This is his first original IP since ‘Fruitvale Station.’ I was so excited to embark on that journey with him, to see him express himself in such a unique, true way,” Göransson said. “There’s something groundbreaking and insane about the idea and also how big he made it – on that scale and with that depth. It’s such an emotional ride.”

Somehow, Coogler was able to take everything that inspired him – his uncle and the blues and vampires and “Don’t Look Now” – and assemble it into a singular, unforgettable experience.

“Sinners” is now playing exclusively in theaters.

The post Inside Ryan Coogler’s ‘Sinners’: How His Bluesy, Bloody Vampire Epic Was Built appeared first on TheWrap.