‘Sinners’ breaks record, or does it?

Oscar truth is complicated

Exclusive to MeierMovies, January 23, 2026

Writer-director Ryan Coogler’s pop-culture hit Sinners has broken the record for most Academy Award nominations, with 16. This tops by two the old record held by All About Eve (1950), Titanic (1997) and La La Land (2016). Or so we’ve been told.

As with most “records,” the truth is more complicated.

For some mysterious reason (ignorance, disrespect or disagreement), most people don’t count special and technical/scientific Academy Awards when chronicling records. But when special awards are counted, there is one film that is tied for the most awards (11) and is now also tied (with Sinners) for the most nominations (16). And that film is hiding in plain sight, as it’s the most popular of all time, when judged by number of tickets sold: Gone with the Wind (1939).

GWTW won eight competitive Oscars, but it picked up two special ones also: to William Cameron Menzies “for outstanding achievement in the use of color for the enhancement of dramatic mood for Gone with the Wind” and to Don Musgrave and Selznick International Pictures for “pioneering in the use of coordinated equipment for Gone with the Wind.” In addition, David Selznick took home the prestigious Thalberg Award that year too. Though the Thalberg is not traditionally given for a single film but for a body of work, it was understood that he was receiving it for GWTW. That brings the film’s total to 11.

The film received 13 competitive nominations. So if you combine the three special awards, its nom total reaches 16, the same as Sinners’. Of course, some might argue that special awards aren’t “nominations” because they aren’t competitive. Therein lies the messiness of historical interpretation.

Regarding Sinners’ nomination total, one should note that if the film had been released prior to 2020, it would likely still have reached 16 nominations (without the new casting category), as the separate sound editing and sound mixing categories were still in existence. If the Academy hadn’t combined those into a single sound category, Sinners would probably now be looking at 17.

Interestingly, both Sinners and GWTW indirectly address race, albeit in vastly different ways. Both take place in the American South. And while Sinners is set in the 1930s, Gone with the Wind was filmed then.

But that’s where the comparisons end, as original Sinners (2 stars on 0-5 scale) squanders its uniqueness on ridiculous orgies of vampire-zombie gore. And its commentaries on race, apparently lauded by Oscar voters, become heavy-handed and misguided as the film transitions from drama to cheap horror in its third act. (Those commentaries are just plain false, according to this interesting review in National Review.)

Perhaps most disappointingly, amid the excessive violence and in-your-face political messaging of the finale, even the musical charm of Coogler’s film is gone with the wind.

Still, regardless of how one counts awards, Sinners now has its place in history, like it or not. And that place will remain pretty solid even if, as is expected, it loses in almost every category to the superior film One Battle After Another.

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For the full list of this year’s Oscar nominations, visit Oscar.org.