A24 is the entertainment force behind a string of indie hit films, from Everything Everywhere All at Once to Hereditary and Lady Bird. It has also produced the television series Beef and Euphoria. In just over a decade, A24 has evolved from a small distribution business into an indie powerhouse that has taken on Hollywood. It even swept the board at the 2023 Academy Awards, landing the coveted Oscar statuette nine times.
In May 2023, American news and opinion website Vox commended A24 for making “some of the most distinct and interesting movies and TV shows of the past 10 years.” So, how did A24 become this successful? The short answer to that question is it empowers creative risk.
A24 was founded on two fundamental principles, according to Nate Jones, senior writer at entertainment news website Vulture. The first was that it would give filmmakers almost unprecedented creative freedom. This principle has resulted in the production of some unique and distinctive films. It also makes the studio attractive to talented up-and-coming directors who want to work with a production company that will allow them to experiment and support their artistic vision.
A24’s most successful movie to date, the multiverse adventure Everything Everywhere All at Once, wowed cinema-goers and critics alike, grossing box office revenue of more than $110 million. The Critics Consensus on Rotten Tomatoes described the movie as “an expertly calibrated assault on the senses.”
Andrew Taylor, a professor of culture and US civilization at Audencia Business School in France, notes that Everything Everywhere All At Once “can perhaps be seen as a product of the TikTok generation.” He explains:
“We often hear that young people today have a very limited attention span, partly due to exposure to short videos on platforms like TikTok or, to a lesser extent, YouTube. Everything Everywhere All At Once embraces this notion and serves as a film that is edited so rapidly, and with so many changes of place and time, that it is almost possible to watch it in TikTok segments. In this way, it moves away from the traditional editing of classic Hollywood and serves a film designed for Gen Z.”
To ensure that filmmakers could take creative risks, A24’s second fundamental principle was that it would forgo traditional marketing channels, such as billboard adverts, and instead exploit cheaper forms of marketing, such as viral marketing and word of mouth. Hence the studio uses social media to create buzz and engagement around upcoming movies, releasing enigmatic teasers and trailers across a variety of social channels.
One of A24’s most defining movies was the 2014 science fiction thriller Ex Machina, a movie that explored relationships between humans and artificially intelligent beings. To encourage attendees to go and see the movie during the 2015 South by Southwest (SXSW) conglomeration of film and music festivals in Texas, A24 set up a fake account on the dating website Tinder. This account was for Ava, the lead female character played by Swedish actor Alicia Vikander. Thanks to a chatbot, Tinder users who matched with Ava on the app were able to converse with her using text messages and she directed people to an Instagram page that promoted the film.
Ava’s fake Tinder account was a stroke of marketing genius since it generated a lot of excitement about the movie and secured free headlines for the A24 brand. Previously, the studio had enjoyed viral social media success when it posted on Facebook an image of Spring Breakers star James Franco, along with other cast members from the film, in a composition that evoked Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper. The photo got 600,000 likes—an impressive tally back in 2013. Such was the success of the campaign that it led to Spring Breakers being described as the ‘first social-media promoted film’ by Gary Faber, founder of marketing consultancy Entertainment Research & Marketing.
A24 adopts a high-volume, low-budget approach to film production. This enables the studio to take greater creative risks, which could theoretically lead to higher profit margins. On average, A24’s budget is $15 million to $20 million per movie, and the studio releases between 18 and 20 movies per year.
In comparison, Disney released 16 movies theatrically in 2022, while Warner Brothers only released 15. The highest-grossing movie of 2022, Avatar: The Way of Water, which earned over $2.3 billion, had an estimated production budget of $250 million. Unlike more established studios, which need most of their films to be profitable, A24 only needs one or two commercial hits per year to balance its books.
Taylor believes that A24’s success may be the result of the studio being ‘in touch with the zeitgeist’ (spirit of the times) and its ability to ‘target a very specific cinema-going public’. He also points to A24’s commitment to diversity, highlighting the breakthrough success of Everything Everywhere All At Once.
“It features ethnic-minority actors at a time when Hollywood is trying to prove itself a sector that recognizes diversity,” Taylor explains. “One of the film’s co-directors, Daniel Kwan, is also an American with an Asian background. Add to all this the fact that the film has dialogue not just in English, but also in Mandarin and Cantonese, it becomes an almost perfect movie for Hollywood to honor at this time.”
A24 has become a cultural phenomenon thanks to the sheer bravery of its artistic endeavors. It is known for pushing the boundaries of taste by making films that are “different” in some way—perhaps because they are offbeat, quirky, or even a little weird. A24 movies are also visually stunning and a feast for the eyes. It is this distinctive brand appeal that helps to lure crowds into cinemas, even as audiences have declined, especially among younger age groups.
Risk-taking lies right at the heart of A24’s success. Since its inception, the studio has been willing to take risks on unconventional and innovative projects that more established Hollywood studios might be inclined to shun. It understands that not every project is going to be a winner, but if it takes enough calculated creative risks, some of them will pay off.
This edited extract from The Disruptors by Sally Percy © 2024 is reproduced with permission from Kogan Page Ltd
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