How A24 Went from Indie Darling to a $3.5-Billion Powerhouse

The New Yorker

The studio is brilliant at selling small, provocative films. Now it wants to sell blockbusters, too.

Transcript

00:00The conventional wisdom in Hollywood is that in order to have a hit you need to appeal

00:03to all four quadrants, men, women, and people over and under the age of 25.

00:08A24's model does not rely on that kind of mass appeal.

00:12When the studio was first starting out, a lot of the films that they picked up were

00:15things that other studios or distributors had dropped or shied away from.

00:19They really embraced the specific and the strange, and because of how distinctive their

00:24films are in this landscape of reboots and sequels and superhero movies, they decided

00:28that ruffling some feathers along the way was only going to help their case.

00:32Talk to me.

00:36I'm Alex Barish, I'm a culture editor at The New Yorker, and for the past several months

00:40I have been deep inside the world of the film studio A24.

00:44A24 was founded in 2012 by these three guys in their 30s, Daniel Katz, David Fenkel, and

00:51John Hodges.

00:52Their business practice has always been to cultivate a certain mystique and let the films speak

00:56for themselves.

00:57A24 are probably best known now for their work with this roster of auteurs, people

01:01like Sofia Coppola, Ari Aster, the Philippou Brothers, Celine Song, and what I found in

01:06my reporting is that in the filming stage they really do just let these people take the reins.

01:11Barry Jenkins told me he had carte blanche when he was making Moonlight.

01:14The point where A24 really asserts itself is in the marketing phase.

01:18When they decided to put out The Witch, Robert Eggers' historical horror movie, as their first

01:22wide release, it was not a straightforward sell.

01:25It's a movie that's set in the 1630s, it's scripted in early modern English, it's not

01:30the most accessible.

01:31But they knew that it was a great film, and a smart film, and a scary film, and they decided

01:36to lean into all of those components, partly by forming an alliance with the Satanic Temple.

01:41They reached out to the temple, they flew out the spokesperson.

01:45Originally all A24 wanted from the Satanists was an endorsement for the movie, but when

01:49the Satanists pitched them on a series of interactive performances to follow screenings of the witch,

01:55they said yes.

01:56One of the parties ended up featuring a theremin player, some nearly nude performers, and a

02:01hardcore dominatrix.

02:02The partnership definitely got the press that they wanted, and the film became a cult phenomenon.

02:07The line, wouldst thou like to live deliciously, lives rent-free in my brain.

02:10Boo!

02:14I feel that the more A24 movies you watch, and I did watch many of them for this piece,

02:19the harder it becomes to describe exactly what they're doing or boil it down to any one characteristic,

02:24but there are a few traits that tend to recur.

02:26Something that's become a kind of A24 staple, which is the elevated genre film, something

02:31like Alex Garland's Ex Machina, a sci-fi film about an erratic tech billionaire who summons

02:36his employee to conduct a Turing test on a beautiful android, or something like Ari Aster's Midsommar,

02:41which is this brightly lit pagan horror film that's kind of also about a bad breakup and a terrible

02:47boyfriend.

02:48How long have you two been together?

02:50Just over three and a half years.

02:51Four years.

02:52A lot of their projects also really draw from the personal lives of their creators.

02:56Celine Song's Past Lives is semi-autobiographical, so is Lulu Wang's The Farewell.

03:01Greta Goig, when she was prepping her cast for Lady Bird, actually shared her high school

03:05yearbooks with them.

03:06What if this is the best version?

03:08Their films are also really known for divisive endings, which goes back to one of their very

03:12first movies, Spring Breakers, by Harmony Corrine.

03:15That film starts out with college girls committing petty theft to fund a vacation, and ends with them

03:21being caught up in a dispute between drug lords and one character being machine gunned to

03:25death.

03:26It also applies to pretty much every Ari Aster movie.

03:28I am your mother!

03:29Do you understand?

03:30They also really try to meet the zeitgeist.

03:32You know, a film like Baby Girl, Halina Ryan's sort of post-MeToo erotic thriller, it's an

03:37affair, there's a kink component.

03:39You're really hitting every third rail imaginable.

03:41Sorry, I didn't mean to, that was incredibly inappropriate.

03:46A24 have really elevated the merch drops into a stunt and an art form.

03:51One of the most memorable examples I encountered in my reporting was for the horror film Talk

03:56to Me.

03:57The way they let the spirits in within the universe of the film is through an embalmed,

04:01cursed hand.

04:02Originally A24 planned to just put out a ceramic reproduction of the hand, but then they decided

04:07that in keeping with the themes of the film, you needed to be able to putty with it.

04:11The sculpture that they ultimately put out actually functions like a bong, and it did

04:15sell out pretty much immediately.

04:20They've really built up this devoted following, there are a lot of A24 superfans out there.

04:25You know, you're not seeing people running to the theatres to see the new Lionsgate movie

04:28because it is a Lionsgate movie.

04:30And that's part of the way they promote their movies too.

04:32They have about 100,000 so-called AAA24 members who get invited to early screenings, get early

04:39access to merch.

04:40I actually attended one of these events in the tiny rural New Mexican town of Truth or Consequences.

04:45A24 had bussed in dozens of AAA24 members from Albuquerque, about two and a half hours

04:51away.

04:52When they got there, they spent the day meeting with Ari Aster, who had shot his new Western

04:56Eddington in the town.

04:57And the night ended with a drone show, where you saw A24's logo emblazoned on the horizon.

05:03The thing that a lot of these fans love about A24, and the reason they take pride in,

05:07you know, showing up to its events and wearing its merch, is because it's become synonymous

05:11with a kind of auteur-driven independent cinema.

05:15But recently, a lot of those auteurs have decided to go in a much bigger budget direction.

05:19Josh and Benny Safdie, who broke out with a $2 million drama for A24 called Good Time,

05:24then graduated to $15 million with Uncut Gems, and now they're each making a movie that's

05:29around $70 million in budget.

05:31One of them stars Timothee Chalamet, the other is Dwayne The Rock Johnson.

05:34I think A24, having looked at it for all these months, is really at an inflection point,

05:39and the stakes for independent film are pretty high.

05:41So amid these rising budgets and their expansion into all these different arenas, the fact

05:45they're experimenting now with AI tools, there are people who are worried about where the

05:49company is headed and whether it will still be an advocate for independent film in the

05:53way that it has been.

05:54Part of my quest in reporting this story was to figure out whether that was the case.

05:59You can read my story Autos Inc. in The New Yorker.

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