The Pen in Hand Guide to the Movies: The A24 Way by Geoff Carter

Illustration by Michael DiMilo

By Geoff Carter

Out of all the countless screenplays and treatments wending their way through producers’ and investors’ offices each year, only about five hundred make it to the silver screen. These are mostly traditional studio-produced pictures. Add in independents, the cornucopia of syrupy Hallmark productions, Disney made-for-TV films, and other sources, and the number will rise much higher.

The factors that determine which films get made include (of course) bankability, star power, marketability (franchises, sequels, and remakes are solid bets here), and—maybe—quality. Some studios will mount sometimes absurdly expensive marketing and merchandising campaigns—see Sandworm popcorn boxes from Dune and everything Star Wars—that will sometimes eclipse the film itself. Of course, with the advent of the Star Wars franchise, film merchandising has become a huge income stream. I remember getting Happy Meals for my daughter during the nineties complete with Tarzan, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and other Disney merchandise toys included.

Movies are a business, but the independent movie industry, while constantly edging closer to studio standards, maintains unique perspectives and cutting-edge narrative and cinematographic techniques.

Classic independent films like Slackers, Eraserhead, Easy Rider, Stranger than Paradise, and Blood Simple offer audiences worldviews significantly different than what they might find in Hollywood blockbusters like Mission: Impossible or The Avengers franchises.

The independent film industry is thriving, partly because of the wider markets available through streaming, and partly because of increasing audience demand for films that offer something more than rehashed superheroes and action stars.

While these innovative filmmakers are providing product, opportunities to view their wares can be limited. Distribution companies that pick up movies also determine what is seen and how many people have the opportunity to see it.

One of these companies, A24, has made its mark by not only choosing films it deems creatively innovative and socially important, but by investing in directors and writers, and, as a result, creating an incubator for new artists.

The list of over one hundred and twenty films shepherded by this part distribution, part production, and part marketing franchise is formidable. Not only have they invested in or marketed somewhat obscure films like A Ghost Story, Red Rocket, and Swiss Army Man, they have been behind box-office winners like Everything, Everywhere, All at Once, Ladybird, and Moonlight.

Comedy, drama, sci-fi, horror (particularly heightened horror), coming-of-age stories, family dramas, documentaries, and even Shakespearean dramas are part of the A24 oeuvre. Some feature then-newcomers like Ana Taylor-Joy in The Witch or Janelle Monae in Moonlight, Simon Rex in Red Rocket and Mia Goth in X, XXX, and Pearlwhile others feature familiar faces (usually in unfamiliar roles) like Willem Defoe, Daniel Radcliffe, Adam Sandler, or Laurie Metcalfe.

The commonalities between this huge diversity of work is that they feature innovative or weird narratives, are visually striking, and are auteur-driven—the vision of an artist, not a studio. It’s been said that it’s easy to recognize an A24 film but not to define one. The one common denominator might be that they are always very cool.

A24, the vision behind the visions as it were, was created by three industry veterans, David Fenkel, Daniel Katz, and John Hodges, began as a distribution studio. Determined to provide an alternative to the mega-million over-produced studio movies (the remakes, the endless Marvel and Star Wars spinoffs, and the nauseatingly predictable sequels), the three started by capturing distribution rights through innovative and sometimes aggressive marketing campaigns. As Katz said, “No one had a voice. I felt like there was a huge opportunity to create something where the talented people could be talented.”

According to a Purpose Studios blog post by Shweta Singh, they pitched their company to the producers of Spring Breakers not with a traditional gift basket, but with a cardboard box of glass gun-shaped bongs and munchies—an acknowledgment of their understanding of the film. They got the gig. And the rest is history.

Starting in 2017 with The Lovers, A24 moved into producing some of their films and the results haven been stunning. The work from this studio is so recognizable and so popular that an A24 collection is featured on the streaming channel Max, alongside the Middle Earth, Star Wars, and other collections.

While the original intent of the studio may have been to pry open opportunities in the movie theaters, particularly after the pandemic, streaming services have embraced the A24 experience—and vice-versa. At the beginning, the studio contracted with Amazon Prime and Direct TV.

Now their films have become the industry standard for independent film. Everything Everywhere All at Once and Moonlight won Academy Awards for Best Picture. Brie Larson won Best Actress for Room and Amy won Best Documentary, just a few of many nominations. Few studios produce such thought-provoking and disturbing films as A Ghost Story, Tuesday, or The Florida Project.

Their films have also been groundbreaking in terms of aesthetics and trends. With Hereditary, Midsommar, The Witch, Under the Skin, The Lighthouse, and now Heretic, A24 has been at the forefront of the “elevated horror” film genre, which emphasizes character, thematic elements, and psychological effects more than the typical slasher film. A24’s success with this subgenre has brought renewed attention to earlier “heightened classics” outside the A24 house, like The Babadook or It Follows. In the A24 tradition of non-trendiness, Ti West’s horror trilogy of X, Pearl, and XXX straddles the new horror traditions as well as the time-honored slasher tropes we all know and love.

As viewers, we should be eternally thankful to visionaries like the crew at A24. Realizing there was a dearth of good, original, innovative, weird, and cool cinema out there, they began filling that hole. The films they’ve been responsible for bringing into our homes and our theaters are nothing short of remarkable. While they may be disturbing or unnerving, they never fail to entertain—or to make us think.

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