By 2050, Ryan Coogler will hold the rights to his film ‘Sinners,’ a Black Southern Gothic blockbuster he wrote and directed, due to a strategic agreement he secured with Warner Bros. From the outset, his contract granted him final cut privileges and a share of the box office earnings. For Coogler, retaining ownership of his story about Black empowerment in the Jim Crow South was an essential, non-negotiable condition.
While much attention has been given to the contract terms surrounding ‘Sinners,’ the film’s true fascination lies beyond the business aspects. It is a genre-defying work infused with elements of horror, blues, and historical narrative, even including supernatural creatures like vampires. At its core, however, the film examines negotiation as a recurring motif—the intricate and often fraught art of deal-making in America, especially within a racially oppressive context. (Note: this article contains spoilers for ‘Sinners.’)
The story centers on identical twins, Smoke and Stack, both portrayed by Michael B. Jordan, who has frequently collaborated with Coogler. After serving in World War I and engaging with Chicago’s criminal underworld, the brothers return to their hometown of Clarksdale, Mississippi, in 1932. They aim to open a juke joint, enlisting their talented cousin Sammie as a guitarist. Clarksdale is famously known as the crossroads where blues legend Robert Johnson is said to have made a pact with the devil to gain his musical prowess. Armed with a satchel of cash and a truck full of liquor, the twins view Chicago simply as “Mississippi with tall buildings instead of plantations.”
Their vision is to create a Black-owned refuge—a vibrant space steeped in blues music and Black joy—that offers an escape from the pervasive terror of racial oppression. Many patrons are Black sharecroppers trapped in exploitative contracts imposed by white landowners. This exploitation is depicted in the film when a customer attempts to pay with wooden coins, which are accepted only at the plantation store, highlighting the limited economic freedom available.
In the Jim Crow South, Black individuals had little power to negotiate favorable terms. Despite the supernatural elements in the film, the true antagonists are ordinary men like Hogwood, a secret Klansman from whom Smoke and Stack purchase the mill to convert into their juke joint. These men present a friendly facade while harboring ruthless intentions, taking money with a handshake but never intending to honor agreements.
During this era, Black blues musicians frequently faced legal disenfranchisement and were often unaware of how royalties worked—or were deliberately kept uninformed. Payments were sometimes made in kind, such as bottles of alcohol, rather than money. For instance, Bessie Smith believed she had secured a lucrative contract in 1923 with Frank Buckley Walker, a white executive responsible for ‘race records’ at Columbia. However, Walker struck out the royalty clause in her agreement, instead giving her a flat fee of $200 per recording. At the time, Smith considered this a good deal for a Black artist, unaware that many white country musicians at Columbia enjoyed royalty arrangements despite her greater success. Over her career with Columbia, Smith earned just under $30,000 for 160 recordings, even though her sales exceeded six million records in the 1920s.
