After Some Awards Letdowns For Sinners, The Movie Just Got A Whole Lot Of Love From The 2026 Actors Awards Nominations

With some notable exceptions (like Jonathan Demme’s The Silence Of The Lambs), horror does not have a great track record when it comes to awards season in Hollywood. Movies about monsters and terrors have a tendency to get overlooked by various guilds, organizations, and voting bodies for major prizes. Given this history, it wasn’t terribly surprising this past weekend to see Ryan Coogler’s Sinners (CinemaBlend’s favorite film of 2025) miss out on some of the big prizes at the Critics' Choice Movie Awards – but if you’re among the cinephiles keeping hope alive for the work to receive proper acclaim and hardware in the months to come, you’ll appreciate the nominations that have just been announced for the 2026 Actors Awards.

Formerly known as the SAG Actor Awards, the Actors Awards announced the films and stars up for trophies at the upcoming SAG-AFTRA-centric ceremony, and while Sinners didn’t collect the most nominations of any big screen title (that superlative goes to Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another), it did get the silver medal in that regard. The movie is up for five of the six available prizes, with the only exception being “Female Actor in a Leading Role.” The nominations for the Ryan Coogler film are as follows:

• Cast Ensemble in a Motion Picture - Sinners
• Male Actor in a Leading Role - Michael B. Jordan
• Male Actor in a Supporting Role - Miles Caton
• Female Actor in a Supporting Role - Wunmi Mosaku
• Stunt Ensemble in a Motion Picture - Sinners

One Battle After Another bested Sinners in the nominations count by having Chase Infinity nominated for “Female Actor in a Leading Role” and both Benicio Del Toro and Sean Penn up for “Male Actor in a Supporting Role.”

The Actors Awards marks a good chance for the blockbuster film from last spring to get some love that it didn’t get from the aforementioned Critics' Choice Movie Awards – which I say while acknowledging that Sinners took home four prizes on Sunday, including “Best Young Actor/Actress” for Miles Caton. The movie may have won for “Best Casting And Ensemble,” but the stars struck out in the four major acting categories, with those trophies going to Marty Supreme’s Timothée Chalamet (“Best Actor”), Hamnet’s Jessie Buckley (“Best Actress”), Frankenstein’s Jacob Elordi (“Best Supporting Actor”) and Weapons’ Amy Madigan (“Best Supporting Actress”).

With the nominations now established, final voting for the Actors Awards will take place between January 14 and February 27, and the ceremony will be broadcast live for Netflix subscribers on March 1 – exactly two weeks before the Academy Awards (which will have Conan O’Brien back as host). Per Variety, there is an 80 percent match rate between the winners at the two shows going back to 2009, so if Sinners can get a lot of love from SAG-AFTRA in early March, it may end up with more than a few Oscars mid-month as well.