Sinners has become a mᴀssive box office success for a mulтιтude of reasons. The 2025 horror movie was written and directed by Ryan Coogler (Creed, Black Panther, Fruitvale Station) and features a robust ensemble cast that includes Michael B. Jordan (in a dual role), Hailee Steinfeld, Jack O’Connell, Wunmi Mosaku, Miles Caton, Buddy Guy, Lola Kirke, Li Jun Li, Jayme Lawson, Omar Miller, and Delroy Lindo. Set in Clarksdale, Mississippi in 1932, the movie follows identical twins Smoke and Stack (both played by Jordan) battling vampires after returning to their hometown to convert an old sawmill into a juke joint.

The Sinners box office broke multiple records, beginning by earning the best Easter debut in history for an R-rated movie, and eventually rising to an overall worldwide gross of $361.5 million. In addition to its worldwide total making it the seventh highest-grossing movie of 2025 so far (behind only Thunderbolts*, Captain America: Brave New World, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, Lilo & Sтιтch, A Minecraft Movie, and Ne Zha 2), its domestic total of $275.7 million makes it the highest-grossing original live-action movie in North America since Christopher Nolan’s 2010 movie Inception, which earned a domestic total of $292.6 million.

1

Critics Adored Sinners

It Has A Near-Perfect Rotten Tomatoes Score

One thing that immediately turned the attention of general audiences toward the horror movie is most likely the fact that critics’ Sinners reviews were overwhelmingly positive. In fact, the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes collected 371 different critics’ writeups and found 97% of them to be positive, which earned the movie a Certified Fresh score. Its 97% rating gives it the sixth-highest Certified Fresh score of the year overall at the time of writing. It is also the highest for any wide-release movie. The next-highest movies are Black Bag (96%), One of Them Days (94%), Companion (93%), and Warfare (93%).

2

Audiences Also Had A Strong Response To Sinners

It Is Verified H๏τ On Rotten Tomatoes

Audiences also built word of mouth by sharing reviews that were nearly as positive as critics’. On the Rotten Tomatoes Popcornmeter, Sinners is Verified H๏τ thanks to a 96% score that comes from more than 25,000 verified user reviews with an average rating of 4.8 out of 5. It has also performed well on other user review platforms, earning 4.2 out of 5 on Letterboxd, 9.4 out of 10 on ScreenRant‘s user platform, and 7.8 out of 10 on IMDb, alongside an A via CinemaScore (making it the only horror movie to have ever gotten a score higher than “A-“).

3

Sinners’ Budget Made It An Event Movie

It Posed A Huge Risk, But It Paid Off

One unique quality of the 2025 box office hit is the fact that the reported budget of Sinners is roughly $90 million, which most likely places its break-even point somewhere around $225 million. This put the movie in a precarious position, because R-rated horror has a limited audience due to members under 17 not being able to purchase tickets without being accompanied by a parent or guardian. However, its large budget allowed it to deliver a big-screen cinematic spectacle the likes of which have rarely been seen in the horror genre, which then helped propel its superb word of mouth.

4

Sinners Gained A Reputation As An IMAX Experience

IMAX Tickets Come With A Surcharge

Sinners‘ reputation as a spectacle also helped drive audiences toward seeing it in IMAX and on other Premium Large Format screens in order to see it in as much detail as possible. This surge was also propelled by Ryan Coogler’s support of the movie’s IMAX presentations and widespread explanations of the filmmaking decisions behind shooting it for IMAX. Because IMAX tickets are more expensive than other ticket types, the surcharge also helped boost the movie’s overall box office in the same way that tickets for 3D screenings helped support the huge growth of mega-hits like James Cameron’s 2009 spectacle Avatar.

5

Ryan Coogler Is A Brand Name Director

He Is Known For Multiple Major Franchises

Another reason that the movie performed so well is the reputation of its director, who is a two-time Oscar nominee. All five Ryan Coogler movies (Fruitvale Station, Creed, Black Panther, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, and now Sinners) have been both critically and commercially successful, cementing him as an auteur director of note. Thus, his name is a brand in and of itself much like Christopher Nolan, Jordan Peele, and James Cameron, meaning that the movie did not need to be attached to a major franchise like Rocky or the Marvel Cinematic Universe in order for it to attract widespread attention.

6

Michael B. Jordan Is A Huge Box Office Star

He Has A Longstanding Working Relationship With Coogler

Ryan Coogler’s lead actor is also a known quanтιтy who proved to be a box office draw. While three of the Top 5 Michael B. Jordan movies are Coogler movies (Creed, Black Panther, and Sinners) thanks to their longstanding working relationship that has seen him star or make a cameo appearance in all five тιтles, the actor has led a variety of successful movies that have collectively grossed more than $2.8 billion at the box office worldwide. This includes 2023’s Creed III, which Jordan also directed and which became the highest-grossing installment in the Creed franchise by grossing $276.1 million.

7

Sinners Found An Audience Hungry For Original Movies

Franchise тιтles Are The Norm In The 2020s

While not all original movies become box office hits, this success was also supported by the fact that Sinners is an entirely original movie. While the good reviews, word of mouth, and well-known names attached helped draw attention to the horror movie in the first place, the fact that it is an original story gives it a unique quality that helped it stand out once it got that attention. This is likely because it comes at a time when there have been no original Hollywood movies in a year’s Top 10 since 2020, when Christopher Nolan’s Tenet took No. 5.

8

Original Horror Has Been Thriving In The 2020s

Sinners Arrived In A Great Moment For The Genre

While original movies have struggled to make it into the Top 10 in general, Sinners was also given a boost by the fact that audiences in the 2020s have grown accustomed to being welcoming to untested horror тιтles, making quite a few of them into substantial hits. On the indie level, this includes A24’s Talk to Me and Neon’s Longlegs making huge returns on small investments. However, original studio horrors like Blumhouse/Universal’s M3GAN, Universal’s Nope, and Paramount’s Smile have also made huge splashes. In fact, Smile‘s $217.4 million gross made it the highest-grossing horror movie of 2022 in general.

9

Sinners Didn’t Have Direct Compeтιтion For Almost A Full Month

It Had A Grace Period Before A Franchise Horror Hit Debuted

Another thing that helped Sinners tremendously was the timing of its release. It had quite a bit of runway during which it could continue to bring in audiences, as it was not faced with compeтιтion from another major, well-reviewed, wide-release horror movie until Final Destination Bloodlines debuted four weeks later. Additionally, the only major tentpole to debut during that time was Marvel’s Thunderbolts*, which has underperformed, preventing it from taking up as much space in theaters as it might have otherwise. The next hit blockbuster to debut after Sinners was Lilo & Sтιтch, which didn’t debut until Memorial Day weekend.

10

Sinners’ Box Office Success Propelled Itself

It Was A Perpetual Motion Machine

Another thing that helped Sinners climb so high up the box office charts was the fact that it was succeeding in theaters in the first place. Reports about the box office records that the movie was breaking, as well as its uncanny ability to thrive in spite of its huge production budget, likely piqued the attention of moviegoers who otherwise may not have been interested in the project. This reporting functioned in a similar way to direct word of mouth, showcasing the fact that the movie was a huge draw for other ticketbuyers and encouraging others to join their numbers.