[Alex] The conventional wisdom in Hollywood
is that in order to have a hit,
you need to appeal to all four quadrants.
Men, women, and people over and under the age of 25.
A24’s model does not rely on that kind of mass appeal.
When the studio was first starting out,
a lot of the films
that they picked up were things that other studios
or distributors had dropped or shied away from.
They really embraced the specific and the strange.
And because of how distinctive their films are in this
landscape of reboots and sequels,
and superhero movies,
they decided that ruffling some feathers along the way
was only going to help their case.
Talk to me.
I’m Alex Barasch.
I’m a culture editor at The New Yorker,
and for the past several months,
I have been deep
inside the world of the film Studio A24.
A24 was founded in 2012
by these three guys in their 30s.
Daniel Katz, David Fenkel, and John Hodges.
The business practice has always been
to cultivate a certain mystique
and let the film speak for themselves.
A24 are probably best known now for their work
with this roster of auteurs.
People like Sofia Coppola,
Ari Aster, the Philippou brothers,
Celine Song.
And what I found in my reporting is
that in the filming stage,
they really do just let these people take the reigns.
Barry Jenkins told me he had carte blanche
when he was making Moonlight.
The point where A24 really asserts itself is
in the marketing phase.
When they decided to put out The Witch
Robert Eggers’ historical horror movie
as their first wide release,
it was not a straightforward sell.
It’s a movie that set in the 1630s.
It’s scripted in early modern English.
It’s not the most accessible,
but they knew that it was a great film
and a smart film
and a scary film,
and they decided to lean into all
of those components,
partly by forming an alliance
with the Satanic Temple.
They reached out to the temple,
they flew out the spokesperson.
Originally, all A24 wanted from the Satanist was an
endorsement for the movie.
But when the Satanist pitched them on a series
of interactive performances
to follow screenings of The Witch,
they said yes.
One of the parties ended up featuring a theremin player,
some nearly nude performers and a hardcore dominatrix.
The partnership definitely got the press that they wanted,
and the film became a cult phenomenon.
The line wouldst thou like to live deliciously?
lives rent free in my brain.
Boo!
I feel that the more A24 movies you watch,
and I did watch many of them for this piece,
the harder it becomes to describe
exactly what they’re doing
or boil it down to any one characteristic.
But there are a few traits that tend to recur.
Something that’s become a kind of A24 staple,
which is the the elevated genre film.
Something like Alex Garland’s Ex Machina,
a sci-fi film about an erratic tech billionaire
who summons his employee
to conduct a Turing Test on a beautiful android.
Or something like Ari Aster’s Midsommar
which is this brightly lit pagan horror film
that’s kind of also about a bad breakup
and a terrible boyfriend.
How long have you two been together?
Just over three and a half years.
Four years.
A lot of their projects also really draw
from the personal lives of their creators.
Celine Song’s Past Lives
is semi-autobiographical,
so is Lulu Wang’s The Farewell.
Greta Gerwig when she was prepping her cast for Lady Bird
actually shared her high school yearbooks with them.
What if this is the best version?
Their films are also really known for divisive endings,
which goes back to one of their very first movies
Spring Breakers by Harmony Korine.
That film starts out
with college girls committing petty theft
to fund a vacation
and ends with them being caught up in a dispute
between drug lords,
and one character being machine gunned to death.
It also applies to pretty much every Ari Aster movie.
I am your mother.
Do you understand?
They also really try to meet the zeitgeist.
You know, a film like Babygirl
Halina Reijn’s sort of post-Me Too erotic thriller.
It’s an affair.
There’s a kink component.
You’re really hitting every third rail imaginable.
Sorry, I didn’t mean to…
That was incredibly inappropriate.
A24 have really elevated the merch drops into
a stunt and an art form.
One of the most memorable examples I encountered
in my reporting was for the horror film Talk To Me.
The way they let the spirits in within the universe
of the film is through an embalmed cursed hand.
Originally, A24 planned
to just put out a ceramic reproduction of the hand,
but then they decided that in keeping with the themes
of the film, you needed to be able to party with it.
The sculpture that they ultimately put out actually
functions like a bong,
and it did sell out pretty much immediately.
[Group] Do it!
Do it!
Do it!
They’ve really built up this devoted following.
There are a lot of A24 super fans out there.
You know, you’re not seeing people running to the theater
to see the new Lionsgate movie
because it is a Lionsgate movie,
and that’s part of the way they promote their movies too.
They have about 100,000 so-called AAA24 members
who get invited to early screenings,
get early access to merch.
I actually attended one
of these events in the tiny rural New Mexican town
of Truth or Consequences.
A24 had bussed in dozens of AAA24 members
from Albuquerque about two and a half hours away.
When they got there, they spent the day meeting
with Ari Aster
who had shot his new Western Eddington in the town,
and the night ended with a drone show
where you saw A24’s logo emblazoned on the horizon.
The thing that a lot of these fans love about A24,
and the reason they take pride in,
you know, showing up to its events and wearing its merch is
because it’s become synonymous with a kind
of auteur driven independent cinema.
But recently, a lot of those auteurs have decided
to go in a much bigger budget direction.
Josh and Benny Safdie
who broke out with a $2 million drama
for A24 called Good Time,
then graduated to $15 million with Uncut Gems,
and now they’re each making a movie
that’s around $70 million in budget.
One of them stars Timothee Chalamet,
the other is Dwayne The Rock Johnson.
I think A24 having looked at it for all these months
is really at an inflection point,
and the stakes for independent film are pretty high.
So amid these rising budgets
and they’re expansion into all these different arenas,
the fact they’re experimenting now with AI tools,
there are people who are worried about
where the company is headed
and whether it will still be an advocate
for independent film in the way that it has been.
Part of my quest in reporting this story
to figure out whether that was the case.
You can read my story
Auteurs Inc. in The New Yorker.
