How A24 Redefined Independent Cinema
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In the past few years, A24 has been hitting both indie and mainstream film circuits hard with back-to-back high-quality films like Everything Everywhere All At Once, Minari, Moonlight, Hereditary, and Midsommar with a ‘take no prisoners’ attitude toward film quality and artistic vision.
The understanding of what makes stunning cinema is visibly clear for this American distributor and production house. From the production design to color grading to the originality and eclectic nature of the scripts used, the studio has managed to revolutionize the quality standards in the independent cinema scene across the globe.
The success of a film is often attributed to the director or actors involved, rather than the studio responsible for its distribution.
So what is it? What code have they cracked that other producers and distributors never got?
A24 has learned that putting faith in the directors they choose and adhering to a strict quality and brand code is what it takes to have your films be nominated for over 50 Oscars cumulatively.
They are genuinely auteur-driven.
Founded by filmmakers Daniel Katz, David Fenkel and John Hodges, they wanted to fill the void in films being made in the early 2010s with a renewed energy where filmmakers could be filmmakers without the domineering influence of big-name studios.
This mantra of discovering talent and maintaining creative freedom above all else as a generality while making films favoring low budget with high quality has helped A24 in staying independent and still gaining substantial commercial success.
A great example of this is Daniel Kwan, Daniel Scheinert’s 2016 film ‘Swiss Army Man’ - an absurdist comedy about a man who befriends a flatulent corpse he finds on a beach. Initially, the film didn’t fare well at festivals; some audiences even left screenings.
It was a hard sell for them, who only got a low offer from Netflix. In comes A24, under the fearless leadership of its development executive, Noah Sacco, who would threaten, as a gesture, to jump out the window if they didn’t get it.
This shows A24’s passionate dedication to films they believe in.
The understanding of what makes stunning cinema is visibly clear for this American distributor and production house. From the production design to color grading to the originality and eclectic nature of the scripts used, the studio has managed to revolutionize the quality standards in the independent cinema scene across the globe.
The success of a film is often attributed to the director or actors involved, rather than the studio responsible for its distribution.
So what is it? What code have they cracked that other producers and distributors never got?
A24 has learned that putting faith in the directors they choose and adhering to a strict quality and brand code is what it takes to have your films be nominated for over 50 Oscars cumulatively.
They are genuinely auteur-driven.
Founded by filmmakers Daniel Katz, David Fenkel and John Hodges, they wanted to fill the void in films being made in the early 2010s with a renewed energy where filmmakers could be filmmakers without the domineering influence of big-name studios.
This mantra of discovering talent and maintaining creative freedom above all else as a generality while making films favoring low budget with high quality has helped A24 in staying independent and still gaining substantial commercial success.
A great example of this is Daniel Kwan, Daniel Scheinert’s 2016 film ‘Swiss Army Man’ - an absurdist comedy about a man who befriends a flatulent corpse he finds on a beach. Initially, the film didn’t fare well at festivals; some audiences even left screenings.
It was a hard sell for them, who only got a low offer from Netflix. In comes A24, under the fearless leadership of its development executive, Noah Sacco, who would threaten, as a gesture, to jump out the window if they didn’t get it.
This shows A24’s passionate dedication to films they believe in.
