Sinners’ extraordinary run has finally come to an end at the Oscars 2026, nearly a year after it was first released in theaters.
Ryan Coogler’s Southern Vampire drama had been surging coming into tonight, scoring more Oscar nominations than any other film in history, with 16, and winning the Actor Awards’ coveted ensemble prize over stiff competition. Still, with fellow Warner Bros. competitor One Battle After Another having taken home the lion’s share of precursor best-picture trophies, Sinners maintained the sheen of the race’s underdog.
One Battle proved too strong to ultimately overtake, with Sinners winning four awards in total. The film hit two key milestones: Writer-director-producer Ryan Coogler is officially an Oscar winner, having taken home the award for original screenplay as widely expected. And D.P. Autumn Durald Arkapaw became the first woman in history to win the best-cinematography Oscar, a significant and historic upset given that One Battle’s Michael Bauman had won equivalent awards from BAFTA and the cinematography guild.
Coogler’s longtime collaborator, star Michael B. Jordan, also went all the way in best actor on his first nomination. Once a seeming longshot to come out on top, Jordan pulled off an electrifying upset at the Actor Awards — in the middle of final Oscars 2026 voting, no less — that put him in the thick of tonight’s race. This carried through.
Supporting nominees Wunmi Mosaku and Delroy Lindo — like Jordan, first-timers at the Oscars — were thought to be competitive if not quite at the front of their respective categories: Mosaku won the BAFTA Award but lost with SAG-AFTRA to Amy Madigan, while Lindo experienced palpable, late-breaking word-of-mouth support once the Academy nominated him — and after every other televised precursor group snubbed him entirely — just as One Battle’s Sean Penn started seemingly outrunning the pack. Neither was ultimately enough to eke out a win, with Madigan and Penn’s leads proving too large to overcome.
The other win for Sinners went to Ludwig Göransson in best original score — his third Oscar for composing, and second for a Coogler film following Black Panther. (He was also nominated for co-writing the original Sinners song “I Lied to You” with Raphael Saadiq, but lost there as expected to “Golden” from KPop Demon Hunters.) Production designer Hannah Beachler and costume designer Ruth Carter, both of whom already won Oscars for their work with Coogler on Black Panther (and in the latter’s case, on the sequel as well), were never favored to overtake the elaborate crafts of Frankenstein.
The film was the toast of WB’s pre-Oscars bash in Hollywood on Friday night, where CEO David Zaslav called Coogler “the greatest writer-director-filmmaker of his generation” as the director looked on alongside Jordan, Mosaku, Lindo and most every other Sinners nominee (which is to say, more than a dozen people). The film’s record-breaking awards success followed a historic run at the box office, planting a firm flag for the viability of big-ticket original filmmaking in an era of cost-cutting and consolidation — including within Sinners’ own studio.
When The Hollywood Reporter sat down with Coogler shortly after the Oscar nominations were announced, he spoke poignantly of the desire to connect to moviegoers. “I wanted people to know we were thinking about them,” he said. “We were thinking about the audience on this movie every day. Sometimes it is nice to know that you were thought of, you know what I mean?”
Indeed — and based on tonight’s evidence, that’s true for Oscar voters, too.
Conan O’Brien hosted Sunday’s show. Check out the red carpet arrivals here and the full winners list.
