Could ‘Sinners’ campaign as a musical at the Golden Globes? The surprising answer

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As discussed in Gold Derby's 2025 Oscars halftime report, Sinners is sitting pretty with just under six months to go for the rest of the year. Of the films that have had theatrical releases thus far this calendar year, it's the easy frontrunner for Best Picture, and it's cultural footprint is about to become even larger as it heads to Max on July 4.

At this point, it seems like a foregone conclusion that Ryan Coogler's period vampire thriller will be a contender in year-end awards.

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But which year-end awards?

There is an interesting possibility for Sinners when it comes specifically to its placement for the Golden Globes, which divides up the major film categories between drama and musical or comedy. Music, the blues and Irish folk in particular, is an essential element of the film — both in the lives of its characters and in the texture of the film itself — which leads to the main question of its Globes campaigning.

Could Sinners run as a musical?

Sinners

The obvious knee-jerk reaction to the question may understandably be "Don't be ridiculous. Sinners is a drama with music." And that's by no means wrong, but that is not the question. In a world where awards strategy is a legitimate business consideration for the studios, every possible advantage is an asset, and if it's possible Sinner could have an easier path to victory in Motion Picture — Musical or Comedy, the categorization isn't realistically out of the question.

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In recent category history, Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line and Joel and Ethan Coen's Inside Llewyn Davis are two examples of fence films that ultimately ran in Musical or Comedy.

When the question of whether a category decision has been made or even if Musical or Comedy was a possibility was put to Warner Bros. publicity team, they did not respond.

To get to the meat of whether this is even possible for Sinners, let's first look at the letter of the law, according to the official Golden Globes Eligibility and Consideration Rules. Under category criteria for the Motion Picture prizes, the document states that "A musical can be a comedy or a drama in which songs are used in addition to spoken dialogue to further the plot."

The rule leaves plenty of room for interpretation, but in the case of Sinners, an argument could be made that music undoubtedly furthers the plot.

Warning: Spoilers for Sinners follow.

The prime piece of evidence for the argument is a sequence that rightfully drew much praise during Sinners' initial release. In a literal barn burner of a scene, Miles Caton's Sammie Moore sings a song ("I Lied to You") so potent that it conjures the spirits of the past and present, bringing them into the juke point started by his cousins Smoke and Stack (Michael B. Jordan). And while the sequence is a virtuosic alchemy of filmmaking and performance in the moment, its plot ramifications aren't clarified until later.

Late in the film, Remmick, the Irish vampire played by Jack O'Connell, reveals that the entire reason behind his attack on the juke joint is to subsume Sammie into his (mostly) eternal collective so that he can summon the souls he's lost during his damned existence.

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Put simply, a song is the entire reason that the main plot of Sinners happens.

So by that reading of the rules and the film itself, Warner Bros. could submit Sinners as a musical. Whether it does or not will likely come down to choices within the studio and possibly by the filmmakers.

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