Ryan Coogler’s Sinners is finally set to premiere on Max, roughly 11 weeks after its theatrical debut. Marking the fifth collaboration between Coogler and Michael B. Jordan, the vampire period piece featured a tribute to Chadwick Boseman, who headlined the revered filmmaker’s biggest movie to date, Black Panther, in 2018.

Although most might’ve missed out on the subtle tribute, which was brought into the spotlight by production designer Hannah Bleacher on X, with the movie now finally available for streaming, fans can look it out for themselves.

The production team created the church in the revered movie from scratch to fit the vampire period piece’s themes. But in addition to that, production designer Hannah Bleacher revealed that it also featured a nod to Chadwick Boseman through the beams that create the X-gesture.

During an interview with Variety, Bleacher elaborated on the beams, stressing that the X-shaped cross in the rafters was an homage to the Wakanda Forever gesture and, in turn, Boseman, who was instrumental to Ryan Coogler‘s rise.

Bleacher added:

We have an X-shaped cross in the rafters, and it was homage to ‘Black Panther: Wakanda Forever’ and Chadwick Boseman because it was doing the Wakandan gesture in the beams. And that cross followed certain characters around

Moreover, the Black Panther star’s influence on the movie extends beyond the Church’s beams, as Michael B. Jordan‘s own performance was influenced by Boseman, whose untimely demise left a huge void for Coogler and him.

As if breaking box-office records against all odds wasn’t enough, Coogler’s vampire period piece is making a big step towards accessibility with the inclusion of Black American Sign Language (BASL), according to THR.

This makes Ryan Coogler’s movie the first-ever movie on a streaming platform to be interpreted into BASL, which Max described as “A major step forward in accessibility, representation, and visibility in streaming.”

Nakia Smith, a notable figure in the Black deaf community, interprets Sinners‘ BASL. Speaking of this initiative, the SVP of Global Product Management at Warner Bros. Discovery, Naomi Waibel, issued a statement which read:

Accessibility within streaming is not a one-size-fits-all approach. Our goal at Max is to make these great stories accessible to all audiences in a way that is authentic to the content and the communities we serve

Hopefully, the success of Coogler’s original work will contribute to a surge in original movies from mainstream studio giants, especially since IP-driven movies are no longer a guarantee of success. It’ll be interesting to see what’s next for Coogler, who has yet to drop the ball.

Did you catch this homage in Sinners?