A24 Films
in the '90s has an upstart entertainment company bet so much—and won so big—on auteur-driven independent films. A24 made its name distributing risky flicks like Spring Breakers and The Witch, then doubled down and produced its own: Moonlight, a coming-of-age story about a gay black man, which quite literally snatched the Best Picture Oscar from the sentimental favorite, La La Land.
Now, A24 has solidified its place as a powerhouse with serious range. That includes cheeky coming-of-age stories Lady Bird and Eighth Grade, black-and-white epics in The Lighthouse and The Tragedy of Macbeth, and films that blur the lines between sci-fi, horror, and comedy like Everything Everywhere All at Once and Midsommar. Its influence even extends to the small screen with the notoriously edgy smash hit Euphoria.
So just much is A24 disrupting Hollywood? Let’s put it this way: Its headquarters are in New York.
Who Are They?
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What’s in a name?
It’s named for the Italian highway (Autostrada 24) David Katz was driving on his way to Rome, when he had what he calls, “a moment of clarity” about starting a company. “And in that moment,” Katz told GQ Style, “I was like: Now it’s time to go do this.”
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TEN YEARS OF
A24's MVPs
Gerwig initially garnered acclaim appearing in mumblecore movies in the mid-to-late ’00s along with star turns in the films of Noah Baumbach, her creative collaborator and eventual partner. She first connected with A24 in 2016, when she co-starred in Mike Mills’ semi-autobiographical 20th Century Women as the older, artistic (and cancer-stricken) mentor of Annette Bening’s 15-year-old son. A year later, she netted Oscar noms for writing and directing the coming-of-age film Lady Bird.
Greta Gerwig
director
The Greek director first won attention for the psychological drama Dogtooth, about a couple who keep their adult children ignorant of the outside world by locking them inside their compound. He garnered even more acclaim with his back-to-back A24 releases: The Lobster, a dystopic black comedy about a world in which single people have 45 days to find a partner lest they be transformed into animals, and The Killing of a Sacred Deer, about a teenage boy who curses a cardiac surgeon and his family with mysterious illness.
Yorgos Lanthimos
director
Following her scene-stealing turn in Mad Max: Fury Road, Riley Keough co-starred in Andrea Arnold’s road drama American Honey. She continued collaborating with A24 by co-starring in the horror film It Comes At Night, the cult neo-noir Under the Silver Lake, and most recently, Janicza Bravo’s ripped-from-Twitter black comedy Zola.
Riley Keough
actress
An A24 partisan since the beginning of his career, Aster broke onto the scene with his debut horror film, Hereditary, which made a huge splash at its premiere at Sundance in 2018 before garnering critical acclaim and commercial success upon its theatrical release that summer. His follow-up, Midsommar, about four grad students caught up in a Scandinavian pagan cult during a midsummer festival in rural Sweden, was also a critical and commercial success. Aster’s third feature is Disappointment Blvd., a portrait of a successful entrepreneur starring Joaquin Phoenix.
Ari Aster
Director
Based on Mills’ childhood, 20th Century Women follows a single mother (played by Annette Bening) in her mid-50s raising a 15-year-old son in a boarding house with eclectic tenants and passers-by. His next A24 film, C’mon C’mon, was released last year and followed a radio journalist (Joaquin Phoenix) trying to bond with his precocious nephew (Woody Norman) as he travels the country interviewing children about their thoughts on the future.
Mike Mills
Director
Swinton co-starred in her longtime friend Joanna Hogg’s two-part autobiographical film The Souvenir. She plays the mother of Julie (played by Swinton’s own daughter, Honor Byrne), a film student who falls in love with a charismatic older man in the throes of heroin addiction. Swinton will also star in Hogg’s next film The Eternal Daughter, about which not much is known.
Tilda Swinton
actress
Though he won an Oscar portraying a certain clownish Batman villain, Phoenix has also made his mark starring in a few A24 movies. The first, C’mon C’mon, features the moody actor as a sympathetic mentor to a precocious, fragile nephew. Phoenix is also the star of Disappointment Blvd., Ari Aster’s third feature film.
Joaquin Phoenix
Actor
Yeoh rose to fame starring in ’90s Hong Kong action films before making an international splash in Tomorrow Never Dies and Ang Lee’s Oscar-winning Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. The legend is now experiencing a long renaissance, which began with the romantic comedy Crazy Rich Asians. She starred in A24’s hit sci-fi dramedy Everything Everywhere All At Once as a Chinese-American laundromat owner who must defeat a powerful threat by engaging with multiple versions of herself from parallel universes.
Michelle Yeoh
Actress
One of the great American independent film directors, Reichardt’s first A24 film had the misfortune of being released just as COVID-19 swept the world. Despite the bad timing, First Cow, a buddy film about a reserved chef and a Chinese immigrant who team up selling oily cakes in the Oregon Territory during the 1820s, was one of the very best films of 2020. She then directed Showing Up, starring frequent Reichardt collaborator Michelle Williams.
Kelly Reichardt
director
Eight years after his modest debut feature Medicine for Melancholy, Jenkins broke through with the critical and commercial success Moonlight. Influenced by the works of Wong Kar-Wai and Claire Denis, the film follows a young Black boy’s coming of age across three phases of his life as he struggles with his masculinity and sexual identity amidst a traumatic landscape. Following his acclaimed miniseries The Underground Railroad, Jenkins’ filmmaking collective Pastel signed a first-look deal with A24 as well as HBO and HBO Max.
Barry Jenkins
director
When she’s not playing MJ in the latest Spider-Man films or acting opposite Timothée Chalamet in Dune, Zendaya leads the ensemble on HBO’s certified hit series Euphoria, A24’s buzzy teen show about sex, drugs, and trauma. She’s also reportedly in talks to play Ronnie Spector, frontwoman of the Ronettes and ex-wife of monstrous record producer Phil Spector, in an upcoming biopic of the singer produced by A24.
Zendaya
actress
After rising to prominence on The Walking Dead and a number of exciting supporting turns, Yeun executive produced and starred in Lee Isaac Chung’s Minari, a semi-autobiographical film about a family of South Korean immigrants who live on a farm in rural Arkansas. Yeun was nominated for an Oscar for his role as Jacob, the patriarch of the Yi family. He co-starred in The Humans, Steven Karam’s film adaptation of his Tony Award-winning play, which was produced and distributed by A24.
Steven Yeun
David Fenkel, John Hodges, and David Katz left their film jobs to form a cinematic super group, A24. As Katz told the Wall Street Journal, they rely on instinct to make decisions: “The first question we always ask is: Is this cool?” A quick glimpse at A24’s roster shows the founders’ taste—and their appetite for risk.
Obvious Child was a romantic comedy about abortion. In Uncut Gems, the studio took “frenetic” to new levels as Adam Sandler swaggered through New York City’s Diamond District riding the highs and lows of huge bets. The Lobster was an absurdist dark comedy about a world in which single people who don’t find love in 45 days are turned into animals. The End of the Tour starred Jason Segal from How I Met Your Mother as the late writer David Foster Wallace, and had no business being half as awesome as it was. Try pitching those to Warner Brothers.
A24 isn’t chasing Oscar gold by pursuing so-called prestige flicks like, say, The King’s Speech, or something where Judi Dench is DTF her manservant. But it is interested in making money. In 2013, A24 struck a $40 million VOD deal with DirecTV, then partnered with Amazon to make its films available on Amazon Instant Video. Bank of America, J.P. Morgan, and SunTrust Banks ponied up a line of credit upwards of $125 million. More recently, in 2022, the studio secured $225 million in private equity funding to pursue new strategic growth projects.
All of this begs the question: Do they know where A24 is spending that cash?
A24’s business model hinges on trusting bold filmmakers to do their best work, then figuring out how to sell it. While other studios might chase exclusive release deals, A24 is conquering cinema in the streaming era by playing the field and releasing films on Netflix, Apple TV+, Amazon, and Showtime. Its brand-building tactics are nothing if not savvy.
Ever heard of a film studio dropping t-shirts and hoodies that get as hyped up as releases from Supreme and Off-White? Lately, A24’s merch lines are among the most coveted items on secondhand fashion sites, with pieces like a Mid90s crewneck selling out in mere hours. Their collaborations have even enlisted labels—including Online Ceramics and Brain Dead—with cult followings all their own.
And then there are the promo stunts. For 2016’s twisted comedy Swiss Army Man—in which Daniel Radcliffe played a flatulent corpse that washes up on an island—A24 sent beach towels and bongs to members of the press. At the South by Southwest premiere of Ex Machina, a thriller about artificial intelligence, A24 created a fake Tinder profile for the film’s robot, who then flirted with local users before finally directing them to see the movie. And ahead of Robert Eggers’ The Witch, A24 approached the Satanic Temple for an endorsement, nearly getting the film’s director banned from entering the country of Poland in the process. High risk, high reward.
The Studio That Produces Your Favorite Movies
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The Rise of an Indie Darling
When Miramax combusted in a blaze of lawsuits and scandal, A24 seized the indie studio mantel and never looked back. Ten years on, it is now synonymous with the films you won’t stumble upon at your mainstream multiplex. You might not love every A24 film, but you know it won’t be boring.
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NOT SINCE MIRAMAX
In 2012,
Actor
Following her scene-stealing turn in Mad Max: Fury Road, Riley Keough co-starred in Andrea Arnold’s road drama American Honey. She continued collaborating with A24 by co-starring in the horror film It Comes At Night, the cult neo-noir Under the Silver Lake, and most recently, Janicza Bravo’s ripped-from-Twitter black comedy Zola.
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SCORE
movie release
'It comes at night'
Movie Release 'Climax'
Trailer Release 'The Lighthouse'
Company news
The Daniels' announced as directors of 'Everything Everywhere All At Once'
Company news
A24 online auction launches featuring props from movies including 'Uncut Gems' and 'Midsommar'
Company news
Netflix releases 'Uncut Gems' on their streaming platform
movie Release
'The Green Knight'
movie Release
'X'
2017
2022
2016
2021
2015
2020
2014
2019
2013
2018
movie release
'A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III'
& 'Spring Breakers'
News
A24 Acquires ‘Obvious Child’ at sundance
movie Release
'The Blackcoat's Daughter'
movie Release
'UNCUT GEMS'
movie Release
'lean on pete'
movie Release
'Eighth Grade'
movie Release
'The lighthouse'
movie Release
'everything everywhere
all at once'
movie Release
'The Green Knight'
Team A24
Greta Gerwig
Gerwig initially garnered acclaim appearing in mumblecore movies in the mid-to-late ’00s along with star turns in the films of Noah Baumbach, her creative collaborator and eventual partner. She first connected with A24 in 2016, when she co-starred in Mike Mills’ semi-autobiographical 20th Century Women as the older, artistic (and cancer-stricken) mentor of Annette Bening’s 15-year-old son. A year later, she netted Oscar noms for writing and directing the coming-of-age film Lady Bird.
director
The Greek director first won attention for the psychological drama Dogtooth, about a couple who keep their adult children ignorant of the outside world by locking them inside their compound. He garnered even more acclaim with his back-to-back A24 releases: The Lobster, a dystopic black comedy about a world in which single people have 45 days to find a partner lest they be transformed into animals, and The Killing of a Sacred Deer, about a teenage boy who curses a cardiac surgeon and his family with mysterious illness.
Yorgos Lanthimos
director
Following her scene-stealing turn in Mad Max: Fury Road, Riley Keough co-starred in Andrea Arnold’s road drama American Honey. She continued collaborating with A24 by co-starring in the horror film It Comes At Night, the cult neo-noir Under the Silver Lake, and most recently, Janicza Bravo’s ripped-from-Twitter black comedy Zola.
Riley Keough
actress
An A24 partisan since the beginning of his career, Aster broke onto the scene with his debut horror film, Hereditary, which made a huge splash at its premiere at Sundance in 2018 before garnering critical acclaim and commercial success upon its theatrical release that summer. His follow-up, Midsommar, about four grad students caught up in a Scandinavian pagan cult during a midsummer festival in rural Sweden, was also a critical and commercial success. Aster plans to release his third feature—Disappointment Blvd., starring Joaquin Phoenix—later this year.
Ari Aster
Director
Based on Mills’ childhood, 20th Century Women follows a single mother (played by Annette Bening) in her mid-50s raising a 15-year-old son in a boarding house with eclectic tenants and passers-by. His next A24 film, C’mon C’mon, was released last year and followed a radio journalist (Joaquin Phoenix) trying to bond with his precocious nephew (Woody Norman) as he travels the country interviewing children about their thoughts on the future.
Mike Mills
Director
Swinton co-starred in her longtime friend Joanna Hogg’s two-part autobiographical film The Souvenir. She plays the mother of Julie (played by Swinton’s own daughter, Honor Byrne), a film student who falls in love with a charismatic older man in the throes of heroin addiction. Swinton will also star in Hogg’s next film The Eternal Daughter, also distributed by A24, about which not much is known.
Tilda Swinton
actress
Though he won an Oscar portraying a certain clownish Batman villain, Phoenix is starring in two A24 films back-to-back. The first, C’mon C’mon, came out last year and features the moody actor as a sympathetic mentor to a precocious, fragile nephew. Little is known about the second, Disappointment Blvd., other than it will be acclaimed horror director Ari Aster’s third feature.
Joaquin Phoenix
Actor
Yeoh rose to fame starring in ’90s Hong Kong action films before making an international splash in Tomorrow Never Dies and Ang Lee’s Oscar-winning Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. The legend is now experiencing a long renaissance, which began with the romantic comedy Crazy Rich Asians. She most recently starred in A24’s hit sci-fi dramedy Everything Everywhere All At Once as a Chinese-American laundromat owner who must defeat a powerful threat by engaging with multiple versions of herself from parallel universes. She’s bound to receive awards attention for the performance later this year.
Michelle Yeoh
Actress
One of the great American independent film directors, Reichardt’s first A24 film had the misfortune of being released just as COVID-19 swept the world. Despite the bad timing, First Cow, a buddy film about a reserved chef and a Chinese immigrant who team up selling oily cakes in the Oregon Territory during the 1820s, was one of the very best films of 2020. Her next film, Showing Up starring frequent Reichardt collaborator Michelle Williams, just premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and will be released by A24 later this year.
Kelly Reichardt
director
Eight years after his modest debut feature Medicine for Melancholy, Jenkins broke through with the critical and commercial success Moonlight. Influenced by the works of Wong Kar-Wai and Claire Denis, the film follows a young Black boy’s coming of age across three phases of his life as he struggles with his masculinity and sexual identity amidst a traumatic landscape. Following his acclaimed miniseries The Underground Railroad, Jenkins’ filmmaking collective Pastel recently signed a First Look deal with A24 as well as HBO and HBO Max.
Barry Jenkins
director
When she’s not playing MJ in the latest Spider-Man films or acting opposite Timothée Chalamet in Dune, Zendaya leads the ensemble on HBO’s certified hit series Euphoria, A24’s buzzy teen show about sex, drugs, and trauma. She’s also reportedly in talks to play Ronnie Spector, frontwoman of the Ronettes and ex-wife of monstrous record producer Phil Spector, in an upcoming biopic of the singer produced by A24.
Zendaya
actress
After rising to prominence on The Walking Dead and a number of exciting supporting turns, Yeun executive produced and starred in Lee Isaac Chung’s Minari, a semi-autobiographical film about a family of South Korean immigrants who live on a farm in rural Arkansas. Yeun was nominated for an Oscar for his role as Jacob, the patriarch of the Yi family. He most recently co-starred in The Humans, Steven Karam’s film adaptation of his Tony Award-winning play, which was produced and distributed by A24.
Steven Yeun
Actor
A24 Films
NOT SINCE MIRAMAX in the ‘90s has an upstart entertainment company bet so much—and won so big—on auteur-driven independent films. A24 made their name distributing risky flicks like Spring Breakers and The Witch, then doubled down and produced their own: Moonlight, a coming-of-age story about a gay black man, which quite literally snatched the best picture Oscar from the sentimental favorite, La La Land.
Now, A24 has solidified its place as a powerhouse with serious range. That includes cheeky bildungsromans Lady Bird and Eight Grade, black-and-white epics in The Lighthouse and The Tale of Macbeth, and films that blur the lines between sci-fi, horror, and comedy like Everything Everywhere All at Once and Midsommar. Their influence even extends to the small screen with the notoriously edgy smash hit Euphoria.
So just much is A24 disrupting Hollywood? Let’s put it this way: Their headquarters are in New York.
The Studio that Brings You All Your Favorite Movies
In 2012, David Fenkel, John Hodges, and David Katz left their film jobs—to form a cinematic super group, A24. As Katz told the Wall Street Journal, they rely on instinct to make decisions: “The first question we always ask is: Is this cool?” A quick glimpse at A24’s roster shows their taste—and appetite for risk. Obvious Child was a romantic comedy about abortion. The End of the Tour starred that doofus from How I Met Your Mother as the late writer David Foster Wallace, and had no business being half as awesome as it was. The Lobster was an absurdist dark comedy about a world in which single people who don’t find love in 45 days are turned into animals. Try pitching those at Warner Brothers.
Who is A24?
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Ari Aster
HORROR MASTER
A24
Hall of Fame
Why "A24"?
It’s named for the Italian highway (auto strada 24) David Katz was driving on his way to Rome, when he had what he calls, “a moment of clarity” about starting a company. “And in that moment,” Katz told GQ Style, “I was like: Now it’s time to go do this.”
HITS: has an upstart entertainment company bet so much—and won so big—on auteur-driven independent films. A24 made their name distributing risky flicks.
A24's Decade of Success
Oscars
5 wins
25 nominations
David Katz, David Fenkel, and John Hodges
A24 isn’t chasing Oscar gold by pursuing so-called prestige flicks like, say, The King’s Speech, or something where Judi Dench is DTF her manservant. But they are interested in making money. In 2013, they struck a $40 million VOD deal with DirecTV, then partnered with Amazon to make A24 films available on Amazon Instant Video. Bank of America, J.P. Morgan and Sun Trust Banks ponied up a line of credit upwards of $125 million. Which begs the question: Do they know how A24 is spending that cash?
A24’s business model appears to be trusting bold filmmakers (Harmony Korine, Sofia Coppola) to do their best work, then figuring out how to sell it. For 2016’s twisted comedy Swiss Army Man—in which Daniel Radcliffe played a flatulent corpse that washed up on an island—A24 sent beach towels and bongs to members of the press. At the South by Southwest premiere of Ex Machina, a thriller about Artificial Intelligence, A24 created a fake Tinder profile for the film’s robot (played by Alicia Vikander), who then flirted with local users before finally directing them to see the movie. To kick off the Oscar campaign for James Franco in Spring Breakers they sent Academy members screeners with the tagline: Consider this shit.
They were playing nicer with Greta Gerwig, who became the fifth woman ever-nominated for best director at the 2018 Academy Awards for her first film, Lady Bird (which was also nominated for best picture and best original screenplay).
And now there's Mid90s, Jonah Hill's first foray into writing and directing, which takes a gritty look at SoCal skate culture in, well, the mid-1990s.
Ten years of
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