Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1541514
5 6 P E R S P E C T I V E I N O V E M B E R / D E C E M B E R 2 0 2 5 When Ryan Coogler called to tell me about his new story, sometime in the fall of 2023, he said Sawmill, Mississippi. Period Piece. Vampires. And I said, "Of course." He was still in the throes of writing the script and decided to tell me the tale, like a Griot recalling an age-old story from years ago. It's how we work. It's how we've always worked since Fruitvale Station—he tells me the story of the people and what they want, what they're going through, and in this case, who'd they be if they were alive today. And always, an important part of the story is the place, and how that place intrudes upon and/or supports the people who live there, how the place influences their decisions, actions and outcomes. This story takes place from sunup to sunup, twenty-four hours. It was a story of ownership in a place where the land was rich, but most of the people were living in poverty, of the sun moving through the sky. The period and place were very specific from the start, 1932 Clarksdale, Mississippi, Northern Delta. Twin brothers, Elijah and Elias aka Smoke and Stack, were coming home to Clarksdale from Chicago, Illinois, with a truck full of bootleg liquor stolen from Al Capone, or so the rumor goes. The twins time in Chicago was spent infiltrating the Italian and Irish mafias that were running the city. Once they loaded up the loot, the twins headed home to Mississippi to open a juke joint in an old sawmill on the Sunflower River. The vision was big landscapes à la Sergio Leone, Tom Ford, Sam Peckinpah, on 70mm film, wide screen and IMAX, flipping aspect ratio during pivotal scenes to open up the environment and, at times, intensity. Did I mention, it's a horror film with vampires? S i n n e r s A S O U T H E R N G O T H I C T A L E B Y H A N N A H B E A C H L E R , P R O D U C T I O N D E S I G N E R A