If you thought Ryan Coogler’s Sinners wasn’t going to be a cultural phenomenon, it’s safe to say you’ve been proven wrong. The stylish and scary vampire flick has taken the film-loving world by storm since it debuted in theaters just two weeks ago, and is now officially one of the highest-grossing vampire movies of all time in North America.
At the time of this article’s publication, Sinners sits at $122 million for its domestic box office gross, overtaking Van Helsing to become the ninth biggest vampire film of all time in North America, according to Box Office Mojo.
According to this ranking, Sinners will soon shoot past the first Hotel Transylvania movie’s $148 million domestic lifetime gross, and could catch the first Twilight movie’s $193 million North American haul.
It’s a different situation entirely when it comes to global box office, of course. Currently Sinners sits at a worldwide total of $161.626 million after two weekends in theaters. 2012’s Hotel Transylvania ended up with $358,488,860 at the global box office. 2008’s Twilight secured $408,516,348 globally.
Here’s where the argument for the extension of the theatrical window comes back into play, but if Sinners sticks around in theaters for a bit — as it should, considering venues around the country are packed to the brim, some even during the middle of the day on weekdays (speaking from personal NYC experience here) — it absolutely has the potential to pull past $300 million globally before bowing out triumphantly and heading to streaming and, hopefully, physical media.
After all, the film is already over halfway there at $161 million, so it’s far from impossible. I think we’re all rooting for the film to go as far as its success will take it, and if that means dethroning Bella and Edward, so be it. The vampire gods — and, quite frankly, the people — will it so.
IGN’s Sinners review returned a 9/10. We said: “Ryan Coogler’s first horror movie expertly blends plenty of vampires and music into a compelling story about twin brothers – played by Michael B. Jordan – returning home to their Mississippi hometown in 1932.”
Lex Briscuso is a film and television critic and a freelance entertainment writer for IGN. You can follow her on Twitter at @nikonamerica.
