Take That for Data

On Sinners, Hollywood’s allergic reaction to evidence, and what we lose when structural critique gets silenced

An audience in Clarksdale, Mississippi watching Sinners. Photograph by Rory Doyle for the New York Times (http://www.instagram.com/rorydoylephoto)

“Yesterday Somebody Wacced Out My Mural”

On Tuesday's episode of The Town, Puck’s Matt Belloni said:

“Well, Franklin Leonard was calling them [the studio heads] racists, which I don't think anyone appreciates.”

He's wrong. Clearly, completely, and — as I’ll argue here — dangerously so.

I didn't say that. Not on The Town. Not anywhere.

Belloni corrected the record after I reached out, and I appreciate that. But the original mischaracterization deserves scrutiny: how casually it was made and what that reveals about the way structural critique gets silenced in Hollywood and beyond.

If you want to judge for yourself, the conversation in question took place on the April 21 episode of the show. You can listen to it here.

In that episode, we discussed the opening weekend performance of Ryan Coogler’s Sinners and the controversy around the film’s release that was sparked in part by two pieces:

• Brooks Barnes’s “Sinners Is a Box Office Success (With a Big Asterisk)” in The New York Times

• Chris Lee’s “Hollywood Execs Fear Ryan Coogler’s Sinners Deal ‘Could End the Studio System’” in Vulture.

“It’s Funny How Money Changes Situations”

But first, let's go back a bit.

In the winter of 2023, the filmmaker Ryan Coogler took a movie package to market that was - to quote Chris Lee's Vulture piece - "A wild drama-thriller cum survival-horror flick set in Jim Crow–era Mississippi featuring blues-music set pieces, steamy sex scenes, Deep South occultism and dozens of Riverdancing vampires."

It was ambitious, genre-defying, and unmistakably a Ryan Coogler film.

Like Fruitvale Station, Creed, and both Black Panther films before it, Coogler wrote the script and would direct it. His longtime collaborator Michael B Jordan would star as twin gangsters Smoke and Stack.

Given Coogler's status as the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed director across his first five films since Steven Spielberg, interest was immediate. A bidding war followed. Warner Bros, led by studio chiefs Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy, won.

To do so, they committed to a production budget of roughly $90 million. They gave Coogler final cut - the legal right to determine the final version of a film released to audiences - and first dollar gross: a cut of every box office dollar, even before the studio recouped its investment.

But the most controversial deal point? Ownership. After 25 years, the film's rights would revert to Coogler. That kind of reversion is rare - but not unheard of - in modern studio deals, where catalog value is king. A film's long tail revenue is part of a studio's valuation. This deal theoretically disrupted that model.

The reaction was a swift and almost operatic industry freakout in the run up to and immediate aftermath of the film's release. According to Belloni's colleague at Puck, Kim Masters, Warner Bros' own head of business affairs took the unusual step of raising the deal as a point of concern with the company's board. A former Fox executive told the New York Times it was "unusually generous." One anonymous source in Vulture warned that it "could be the end of the studio system."

The logic - to the extent there was any - went like this:

Sinners was simply too risky. Even if it did well domestically, "horror movies and stories rooted in Black culture can be difficult sells in some markets," said anonymous analysts in the Times. The rights reversion? Existentially terrifying. Filmmakers were already recalibrating their "expectations surrounding copyright ownership and distribution entitlements, restructuring a time-honored industry power balance and effectively imperiling the cinematic back catalogue: the core asset behind all movie-studio valuation." Sure, Tarantino had negotiated something similar with Sony on Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. But this? This was different.

Never mind the consistent quality and financial success of Coogler's films. Never mind his standing as arguably the most in demand director in the industry under 40 (Greta Gerwig aged out in 2023, for the record), one with whom a relationship could pay untold long term financial dividends for a studio that had it. Never mind that only a handful of filmmakers even could justify a deal like this - a point made by "a high-level talent agent with a privileged understanding of negotiations surrounding Coogler’s deal" in the Lee article.

And yet, despite all precedents and rationale, this particular deal induced panic.

“My Emancipation Don’t Fit Your Equation”

So why slap the panic button now and not when Tarantino got a similar deal?

That same agent offered a clue:

"Look, here’s the problem in Hollywood, okay? There’s no rationale or logic behind absolutely anything. So anytime there is a filmmaker who has a lot of heat and — I hate to say this — but when you have a diverse or a female filmmaker who has a lot of heat off a movie, then it’s all about, What can I get? Hollywood will pay for what they have to pay for. If you control it, and you have a lot of bidders, you can make a different kind of market.”

Let me repeat one part of that quote for emphasis: "When you have a diverse or female filmmaker."

(As a brief aside, can we please stop using "diverse" like this? Populations can be "diverse.” People cannot be. “Diverse” in this context - and most others - simply means "other," and the use of it goes to the core of just how wrongheaded the thinking about all of this stuff is. Anyway...)

This quote has been rattling around in my head ever since I read it - and not just because it's offensive on its face. It unintentionally reveals so much.

Ironically, I actually agree with one thing: There's very little logic or consistency in how this business operates. Heat dictates deals. Perception trumps reality. Data comes last, if it comes at all, often to the detriment of long-term enterprise value.

If the anonymous agent had stopped at a recognition that we've entered a new moment - one where in-demand creative labor occasionally wields more leverage than institutional gatekeepers - that would have been a worthwhile observation. A shift like that should reorganize the industry. That's how change works. I don't know if I entirely agree, but it's a useful provocation.

But instead, the quote narrows the frame. It isolates "diverse or female filmmakers" - not to celebrate their leverage (as one might think an agent would) but to imply that their leverage is unearned. Unusual. Destabilizing. A threat.

The message is clear: these filmmakers - and only these filmmakers - are rewriting the rules. And apparently, that's unacceptable.

Which brings us to the part of the story too often ignored.

“I Know That It's Difficult, I'm Stackin' This Paper It's Sorta Habitual”

In case you didn't follow the Sinners box office story through to its current conclusion, the film currently sits at $361 million worldwide, including $275 million domestically - blowing past even the most skeptical profitability threshold of $250 million. That was the stretch goal, by the way. The number even the most vocal critics said it would need to hit just to be viable.

To quote former Memphis Grizzlies head coach David Fizdale, "Take that for data."

It's Ryan Coogler. None of this should have come as a surprise.

And credit where due: Congratulations to Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy for knowing it was always a good bet. Vindication must be so, so sweet.

Perhaps this shouldn't be a surprise though either.

After all, as I was recently reminded by my friend Aditya Sood, De Luca's early career oversaw the rise of New Line Cinema, one of whose core and insanely profitable pillars was making films like the Friday, Blade, and Rush Hour franchises that targeted underserved Black audiences. He also produced Moneyball, the film adaptation of Michael Lewis's chronicle of Billy Beane's controversial rejection of the conventional wisdom about where value could be found in baseball talent.

“If You Don’t Know, Now You Know”

Now let's go back to what I actually said on the Town.

As I've argued for years — on panels, on Twitter, in boardrooms, and with literally anyone who will listen — the notion that “stories rooted in Black culture can be difficult sells overseas" is a piece of long-standing conventional wisdom.

It's also empirically false.

Despite strong evidence that it’s bad business, studios routinely underinvest in the international marketing and distribution of Black-led films. When those films then underperform abroad - surprise - the assumption is that they failed because they were Black films, not because they were underfunded in the first place.

That cycle persists, even in the face of rigorous data - including a comprehensive study by "noted social justice warriors" (irony mine) McKinsey & Company, which found that when Black-led films are marketed comparably to white-led films, they perform just as well or better internationally on a return on investment basis. (I wrote about it in the New York Times here.) Analysis by the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative’s Dr. Stacy Smith, Dr. Katherine Pieper, and Sam Wheeler has come to similar conclusions.

On the Town, when asked why Sinners didn't open stronger overseas, I responded clearly: Warner Bros didn't market it aggressively enough abroad. Not because anyone was racist, but because, as I said on air, "they don't realize the fact that black film performs internationally just as well as non black film does when it is marketed appropriate to the likely success of the film domestically." (~15:50)

That was my argument. And it was made in good faith, backed by evidence.

It's also notable here that before publishing the episode, Belloni inserted a statement from Warner Bros that I didn't hear until the episode dropped and wasn't given the opportunity to respond to. He said:

“FYI, reached out to Warners on the international marketing issue and I got this statement. 'It was 100% a global spend commensurate with a film of this budget and with the kind of star power behind Sinners.”

He continued:

“Warners specifically cited the global press tour that they did. They took Coogler and the cast to Mexico City and the UK. Several days of promotion there. They did a creator launch event with media and influencers in the Latin American markets, Australia, Asia, Japan, China. They did a London press stop with twenty plus creators, they say. So there was an international marketing effort on this one. We can debate whether that was sufficient ... but they did do one."

I'll take this opportunity to respond since I didn't get one at the time:

Of course Warner Bros isn't going to disclose actual marketing spend, entirely unrelated to this critique or any other. I wouldn't either, for the record. But a few press stops and a creator launch event do not by any serious standard constitute a comprehensive international marketing campaign. I happened to be in London for two weeks less than a fortnight after Sinners opened. I saw zero marketing.

And for the record: Sinners didn't even open in China. So I have no idea why that was cited by Belloni as evidence of commitment.

Following that moment, Belloni pressed again: “Why would studios continue to underinvest in Black films abroad?”

My answer - again - was not racism. It was a failure of competence:

"They are not looking at the numbers. They rely on conventional wisdom that is wrong... And my question to literally everybody in this business and it has been for a very long time: 'why aren't you investing in this?' Black films are marketed in fewer territories on average. They are underinvested in in terms of marketing spend internationally, and the consequence of that is that we're all making less money. I'm saying you're exactly right: They're not responding to incentives. If they were responding to incentives, they would be spending more money and putting Black film in more territories. They're responding to different incentives and I'll let people draw their own conclusions about what those are."

I even went out of my way to reiterate my core belief that international audiences are not as racist as they are often presumed to be. I said:

"The idea that audiences only want to see movies about people that look like them is a folly, right? Hip hop is the most successful cultural movement of the last forty years globally. People were wearing black football [soccer] stars' jerseys literally around the world every year. But somehow film doesn't work? That's a skill issue. If you can't sell black movies to an audience that loves hip hop and black athletes, you're probably bad at your marketing job."

That's the argument I made. That's the argument I've always made.

And it's not calling anyone racist.

“They Fear What They Don’t Understand”

I rarely presume to know what’s in someone's heart when it comes to race. When things go awry, my default assumption is generally ignorance, not malice, and in most cases, I give people the benefit of the doubt. Call me naive (it wouldn’t be the first time I’m accused of it), but transparently, my life's probably just a little bit easier because I choose to move that way.

But ultimately, that’s not at all the point.

What matters - what has always mattered to me - is the data. The decisions. The outcomes that follow from those decisions. And the opportunity, audience, and revenue we leave on the table when we ignore all three.

Which brings me back to why the mischaracterization here isn't just wrong but dangerous - not only for me, but for anyone trying to speak plainly about structural inequity.

Framing a systems-level critique as a personal accusation of racism is a rhetorical sleight of hand that replaces substance with outrage. It turns an argument about policy and economics into interpersonal drama, an amusing little culture war spat, and it shuts down the conversation before it can even begin.

If pointing out measurable racial disparities - like the well documented underinvestment in Black-led films - is met with "you're calling me a racist," then we never get to ask how systems work. We never get to diagnose why they fail, and we never get the chance to fix them.

That framing also reflects something deeper and more insidious: A fragile view of power that treats scrutiny as aggression.

To be unequivocal: I did not accuse anyone of racism. I questioned a pattern of decision making that defies the evidence. I asked why, in an industry ostensibly driven by profit, we continue to ignore profitable opportunities.

Conflating that critique with a personal moral indictment is a form of institutional self-defense. It protects bad habits. It upholds myths over measurements, and it ensures we'll be forever damned to the same conversations about why certain films don't travel, why certain audiences didn't show up, and why certain stories - and storytellers - are still treated as "risky," no matter how much evidence there is that they're a damn good bet. Like Coogler. Or Gerwig. Or any of the incredible filmmakers building careers in their wake.

I’m frankly exhausted of those conversations, and if you’ve paid attention to them at all over the last few decades, I’m sure you are too.

Or maybe you don't care about any of that: Fair play.

Maybe it all sounds too philosophical. Or too inside baseball. Or too "woke."

But here's why it should matter to everyone:

If we don't change things up, we'll keep making bad bets. We'll keep leaving money on the table. And we'll keep wondering why Hollywood isn't working while it circles the drain.

That, to me, is the real danger here - that a data-driven, good faith argument about how we can all get paid was dismissed with "He's calling them racists. LOL."

“They Like ‘What He On?’”

This wasn't supposed to be the launch.

I'd teased it, but I had plans to open this Substack a month or two from now with a bit more time, more material, and maybe even a strategy.

But this moment clarified something for me: if I really want to have deeper conversations about how power works and how it fails, I needed somewhere where my words and not someone else's version of them could speak for themselves.

So now here we are.

Part of this is undeniably about bullying myself into writing more long-form work without the flattening that happens in less than 280 characters, on podcasts, or in press releases. I find writing incredibly painful. It’s probably why I have so much reverence for those who do it and do it well.

But more than that, it's about creating an outlet where I can think aloud, hopefully with some clarity and rigor, in public.

This isn't just about Sinners. Or me. Or even Hollywood.

It's about how we talk - or don't talk - about power, access, value, merit, and who gets to be seen as excellent.

It's about why some voices are still ignored. Why some bets still don't get made. And what that says about the systems that are supposed to discover greatness and fund it.

Here, I'm going to try to write about that.

I'll share data when I have it.

I'll talk to people I think are worth listening to.

I'll try to name what's working and what isn't, and what might be hiding in plain sight.

(And yes, I'll talk about soccer, partly because I can't help myself and because I'm fascinated by the idea that it may be the most meritocratic labor market in the world.)

If any of that sounds like it’s worth your time, I hope you'll stick around. Subscribe. Share. Send it to friends.

(Yes, some of it will be behind a paywall - sorry, but so it goes.)

Disagree with me, even. All I ask is that you engage with what's actually been said - and bring your evidence too.

At the end of the day, there's nothing I value more than a good-faith argument that changes my mind.