Mississippi town where ‘Sinners’ is set lacks a movie theater, but it may still get a screening

By Dan Heching, CNN

(CNN) — Clarksdale, Mississippi – which serves as inspiration for the setting of the Michael B. Jordan-starring film “Sinners” – does not have a local cineplex, which led community organizer Tyler Yarbrough to ask the filmmakers and studio behind the project to host a screening in the city.

Yarbrough, along with Clarksdale mayor Chuck Espy, spoke to CNN’s Victor Blackwell, and shared their hopes that the screening will become a reality.

“Clarksdale is a ways away from a movie theater,” Yarbrough said in an interview, later adding that it took him about an hour and a half to drive to a theater that was showing the film.

Espy pointed to depopulation and lack of funds as contributing factors to the loss of Clarkdale’s two movie theaters, also detailing that most community-and family-centered venues started gravitating toward Memphis, Tennessee, some 80 miles away.

“I’m really excited for the opportunity to have potentially cast members to come and to give people an opportunity to have a real feeling and a real dialogue, so they can immerse themselves in something that the country has not seen,” he shared, referencing the heritage of his city.

“A lot of people are at the table to try to bring this to fruition,” he also said. “People from over a 2-hour radius are talking about coming to Clarksdale to see this event.”

Neither Espy nor Yarbrough said any plans for the screening have been finalized, but Yarbrough mentioned “several conversations” he has been a part of with “Warner Bros. executives.” He said the screening is “looking very promising” to happen sometime between now and Juneteenth, but no details have been confirmed.

“We are asking Michael B. Jordan the rest of the cast. We’re talking about studio execs,” Espy said. “Every single person that has touched this wonderful film launched a great release. We’re asking them to come to Clarksdale.”

CNN has reached out to Warner Bros. Pictures for comment about the potential screening.

“Sinners,” a period piece/crime thriller/vampire horror hybrid from “Black Panther” director Ryan Coogler, has dominated the box office and garnered positive reviews. The film is produced and distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures, which is owned by CNN’s parent company Warner Bros. Discovery.

In it, 1930s Mississippi is seen as a burgeoning and fertile place where blues music is created, as characters perform in moving cars and a juke joint is thrown together for the community to enjoy.

“Clarksdale is a melting pot. It has so many people that come from New Zealand, Australia, all around the world for the authentic feel of the blues,” Espy shared, later adding that the city’s legacy “has been going on for over a hundred years about the heritage of the Mississippi delta and the rich legacy of the blues.”

“So people come from all around the world just to touch the sacred soil of this city, to say ‘I was there, where the blues was born.’”

Yarbrough also mentioned how in a perfect world, he would be able to convince the “Sinners” production team and cast to not only come for a screening and conversation, but also to explore some of what contemporary Clarksdale has to offer.

“We also wanted the cast to come down and experience our juke joints, to experience our museums like the Blues Museum,” among other things, he said.

“I really love a part of the movie that Coogler captured very well was just showing how the blues is the foundation. And you saw one scene where he intertwined all the different genres, from from hip-hop to pop to rock into this one scene, and there’s a lot of power in that that locals need to see,” Yarbrough said. “And so I think when it comes to this screening and everything, too, we’re really trying to connect local folks, Deltans, to that power. So we can remember that we’re powerful.”

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CNN’s Hyan de Freitas contributed to this story.