Sinners just broke the Oscars. Ryan Coogler’s blues-inspired vampire film earned 16 nominations on Thursday (Jan. 22), the most any film has received in the Academy’s history, passing the 14 that All About Eve, Titanic and La La Land shared, per Rolling Stone.
Danielle Brooks and Lewis Pullman read the list for the 98th Academy Awards from Los Angeles. Sinners is up for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Original Screenplay for Coogler, and Michael B. Jordan, the film’s double-duty star, got his first Oscar nomination, for Best Actor. Delroy Lindo and Wunmi Mosaku were both nominated in the supporting categories, and the film is also nominated for Best Original Song (“I Lied to You”) and Best Original Score.
Read moreThe 2027 Festival Circuit Is Already Taking Shape, and the Same Names Keep Showing Up
One Battle After Another came in second with 13 nominations, including nods for Leonardo DiCaprio, Benicio del Toro, Sean Penn and Teyana Taylor (who opened the Globes with a win), and a score nomination for Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood. Rolling Stone notes the two films, now the clear front-runners, will go head-to-head for Best Picture and Best Director. Marty Supreme, Frankenstein and Sentimental Value have nine nominations each, and Hamnet has eight.
What the list says
There is a new category this year: Best Casting, the first addition to the Oscars in more than 20 years, with Hamnet, Marty Supreme, One Battle After Another, The Secret Agent and Sinners as its first nominees. Rolling Stone also flags a music angle that fits our beat: Netflix’s KPop Demon Hunters is nominated for Best Animated Feature and for Best Original Song, for “Golden,” which it also won at the Golden Globes 11 days earlier.
The business context is awkward for the studio. Fox 11 Los Angeles writes that Warner Bros., which made both leading films, is poised for its best Oscar showing in its 102-year history just as it prepares for its sale to Netflix, after Netflix amended its $72 billion offer to all cash.
The question is what ‘Sinners’ can win
Not everyone is celebrating without caveats. A FADER column weighs the record against a long history: only one horror film, The Silence of the Lambs, has ever won Best Picture, and no Black director has won Best Director. The column quotes Coogler on how his success tends to get framed:
A lot of my business success is being put in the context of me being Black.
Ryan Coogler, The FADER, quoting an earlier press interview
The FADER’s writer adds that Lindo has now received his first Oscar nomination after 50 years in Hollywood. Sinners has already grossed roughly $368 million worldwide, the column says, making it one of the highest-earning horror films ever.
The 98th Oscars air live on ABC on March 15, with Conan O’Brien returning as host. That is when we find out how much of the record turns into trophies.
- Most nominations
- *Sinners*, 16 (record); *One Battle After Another*, 13; *Marty Supreme* and *Frankenstein*, 9 each
- New category
- Best Casting
- Ceremony
- 98th Academy Awards, March 15, 2026, on ABC, hosted by Conan O’Brien
Sources
Added to the High Grailed archive on October 12, 2026.
