A24's future: Navigating challenges and opportunities ahead

This is a clip from the smash hit A24 film, The Witch. It's uncompromising, unflinching, and completely unlike anything else getting made today. It fits right in with the rest of the A24 catalog. But how long can A24 and the other indie studios defy the odds and keep producing work that feels like they buck every trend imaginable? Surely, there has to be a moment when everything catches up to them, right? is that moment now? I love it. Is it too pink? What? Moonlight, Lady Bird, Hereditary, The Lighthouse, and The Brutalist. These are not only some of the most important films that have been released over the past decade, but they all are produced by A24. These films and a bevy of others have been released by the indie behemoth and been willed to success by smart advertising, low budgets, and betting big on auteur filmmakers. One of the initial films A24 put out was Spring Breakers, for Christ's sake. You can tell from their inception that they were committed to unique storytellers pursuing idiosyncratic visions. They rapidly followed this up with Ex Machina and Room, both of which won Oscars. And they've been off to the races ever since. Whether it's funding films that literally wouldn't get made anywhere else, or acquiring the distributing projects that are too risky for most studios, A24 has served as a beacon of creativity and artistic expression in a sea of superheroes, sequels, and video game adaptations, the company has quickly filled a hole in the market that no one else, it seems, is either willing or able to even attempt to broach. Thoughtful, artistically adventurous projects that both treat the audience with respect and also ask more of them than your standard big budget blockbuster. In fact, there are multiple indie studios or production companies that are doing similar type of work, bolstered by the groundswell of support that A24 has generated. Neon, Blumhouse, and Annapurna, just to name a few. Doesn't start showing us some respect. We're not going to tip out anymore. Today, the box office is overrun by massive studios with sometimes over 100 years of history propping them up. Disney alone controls the rights to Star Wars, Marvel, Pixar, The Muppets. Disney is not incentivized to take artistic risks and produce weird or unconventional ideas. They're incentivized to make sure that they maximize profits. Whereas indie studios like Annapurna or Neon have a very different prerogative. Of course, they need to make money. But in some ways, they are actually in the clout business as much as they're in the dollars and cents business. In fact, Neon CEO Tom Quinn recently sat down with Variety and outlined just how he took Anora from indie darling to best picture winner. Quinn and Neon spent lavishly, but strategically, in order to attempt to earn the top prize in Tinseltown. They spent $18 million marketing Anora to Academy members. And a few years before, they spent $20 million marketing Parasite to the same crowd of film industry glitterati. You're so lucky. Oh my god, I know. Thank you. This might sound like a lot for a movie that was produced on a budget of $6 million, but it's actually low for Oscar campaigns. Studios are routinely known to spend upwards of $50 to $60 million attempting to bring the Oscar home. What truly sets this apart is that Quinn and the rest of the Neon cohort are willing to take this big a swing with a substantial risk of never recouping that investment. The film also takes an unusually empathetic view of all of its characters. It outlines everyone in shades of gray, even in its lunacy. This is not something that's traditionally considered an awards contender. For context, Anora is also one of the lowest grossing films to ever take home the gold. It's big swings like this that only independent companies can make. Can you imagine if Warner Brothers had spent $600 million marketing The Dark Knight for Best Picture? It probably would have been nominated. But instead, it's one of the most notable snubs in modern film history. Neon, A24, and Annapurna, they're playing a game that's just one really bad hand away from ending. Whatever. A24 has lost a considerable amount of money on Ari Aster's last two projects. Beau Is Afraid cost $35 million. It made $8 million on the opening weekend. Eddington cost $25 to make and only pulled in $12 million opening weekend. Now, are two movies really going to sink a whole studio? Under normal circumstances, absolutely not. In today's world, where access and financing are scarce and audiences are fickle, it's a concerning trend. The swings that are required of these indie studios are getting bigger and bigger. It's not sustainable for Neon to leverage three times the budget of a movie with the hopes of winning the single most difficult to attain award in the whole industry. Most of these indie studios are producing work aimed at adults, which is a welcome breath of fresh air, but also presents an ever more difficult to hit moving target. The other component to these companies staying viable is diversity. It's very easy to try and repeat what's worked in the past, to the degree that A24 already has a problem of films they've released all having an ending beat where a character slowly stares into the camera as they have a meaningful revelation. It's almost a meme at this point. What's that? These moments are all basically the same moment. And they all exist because A24 is known for making movies that feel artistically adventurous in a specific way. But the downside is that it establishes a formula that's both mimicable and repeatable. So now you're not making that choice authentically, you're making that storytelling choice because that's how an A24 movie ends. Hollywood is more cutthroat and dog-eat-dog than it ever has been. It's an industry that thrives on what worked yesterday, and Neon, A24, and Annapurna are all trying to do something no one has done. But how long can you live doing something that's never been done? The patterns are already starting to reveal themselves. Reinventing the wheel every time, that's impossible. A key reason that these companies have been able to thrive is that they're making cheap movies. They're making smart choices and building movies that don't require a lot of resources. Sean Baker, for example, was the writer, director, producer, and editor of Anora. They didn't need a lot of money because he did everything. However, as attrition and calcification happens, that's going to go away. The directors they've made into stars are going to need bigger budgets. The movies are getting more expensive. Jason Blum at one point said he thought that Blumhouse would never make a film over $10 million. Exorcist: Believer cost $30 million to make. Five Nights at Freddy's cost $20 million. This shows you that over a long enough timeline, even the most frugal of producers is hamstrung by the rising cost of everything. And A24's most recent Oscar play with The Rock was produced on a budget of $50 million. It only made $20 million worldwide. Nothing is guaranteed these days. It's only natural that these companies are taking bigger and bigger swings. Hopefully, they continue to pan out, because if these companies come crashing down, it's not just an indie movie studio that needs to be replaced. It's a whole ecosystem of support and artistic expression. These studios produce films that are very difficult to get greenlit outside of their distribution paths, and if films are made outside of the purview of these indie studios, who now have fervent fanbases, they end up as direct-to-streaming films that are dumped and abandoned and never are seen by the wider public. Neon and A24 are, in some ways, the last gasp of the idea of traditional Hollywood. People telling interesting stories for a mass market. Not since the death of Miramax have we had a rise in independent and unique storytelling voices that have truly been absorbed into the culture. You're fond of me lobster, ain't ya? Drunken enough, but ginny fat. I seen it. You're fond of me lobster. We need those stories. We need those artists to exist. With every passing year, the stakes appear to be getting higher and higher for the indie production companies and studios out there doing the work of trying to push the envelope on what exactly is acceptable or marketable. However, the question remains, can A24 and the other indie studios continue to be profitable in a landscape dominated by Spider-Mans and Marios? No pressure. Only time will tell.