The film production and distribution company, A24, has risen to fame in the past decade thanks to its distinctive and authentic films. A24 has produced many award-winning films including “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” “Lady Bird” and “Moonlight.” The company has gained a total of 56 Academy Award nominations, winning 17 of them. A24 also just brought home four Golden Globes for “The Brutalist” and “A Different Man” and is expected to gain several nominations and wins at the Oscars, proving the company has once again earned a spot in the year’s most acclaimed films.
A24 was founded in 2012 by the group of friends Daniel Katz, David Fenkel and John Hodges. The company started out only being a distribution company that searched for distinctive independent films deserving of theatrical releases.
Soon after its creation, A24 also began producing films in 2013 with “A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III.” The films A24 produced and distributed weren’t big box office smashes with a wide appeal. They didn’t include famous actors or directors, they didn’t conform aesthetically or topically to current trends and a lot of its films were more abstract in nature. However, this is what made the company special. Its films were different from all the other Hollywood blockbuster films people were tired of seeing.
The first film that propelled A24 into the spotlight was “Moonlight,” which A24 distributed. The film ended up winning the Academy Award for Best Picture in 2017, putting A24 on the map as a critically acclaimed film company. After this, it started gaining more and more popularity and praise with films like “Midsommar,” “X” and “Hereditary.” The company also started venturing into television, working on hit shows including “Euphoria,” “Beef” and “Hazbin Hotel.”
A24 is now a well-known and established film company that is widely respected for making and distributing high quality, distinctive films. But what made A24 so successful?
A big part of A24’s success is its marketing strategy. The company has always taken an uncommon approach to marketing, especially in the early days when the company wasn’t well known. Even in the early 2010s when social media was relatively new, A24’s marketing strategy was completely social media based.
For its film “Swiss Army Man,” the company made a Tumblr account for the main character, who is a corpse. On the Tumblr page, the corpse, Manny, asked what sex is like, which led to a flood of responses from the public, leading to word getting out about the movie.
For another film, “Spring Breakers,” the company simply posted a picture of the cast in the style of Da Vinci’s “The Last Supper,” which ended up getting over 600,000 likes. A24 even went as far as making a fake Tinder profile for the main character in the film “Ex Machina,” who would catfish people by chatting normally with them before sending them to the Instagram page promoting the film.
This distinctive approach to marketing allowed the public to do most of the work for the company. A24 just had to create a profile or upload a picture and the public would do the rest by interacting with it on social media and getting the word out about A24’s upcoming films. This is a really smart marketing tactic as it's much cheaper than a large marketing campaign, and due to its interactive nature, it’s more likely to get people talking about the company’s new films. After uploading something to social media, the word-of-mouth promotion is virtually free, and sometimes even more effective than giant posters and paid promotions.
Of course, this isn’t the only thing that led to A24’s success. While the company’s marketing strategy is genius, it’s really the films that draw people in and have created A24’s success.
A24 did what many mainstream film companies try to avoid: it took risks. It sought out strange, distinctive and meaningful films in an industry that relied so much on creating stories that were profitable and familiar. Its films shared authentic, diverse storylines, seeking inspiration from different cultures, backgrounds, beliefs, and lived experiences.
This diversity was exemplified with “Moonlight,” which explores the life of a Black gay man, and A24 has continued to share other diverse narratives since in films such as “The Farewell” and “Everything Everywhere All at Once” that follows Chinese American families, “A Different Man” which features people with disabilities, and “I Saw the TV Glow” and “Queer” which include trans and queer storylines.
By telling stories that are so often undermined, A24 was able to change the industry by proving that those stories are worth being told. It also showed that authenticity and vulnerability provide much more value than large budget franchises produced by big name companies. I am glad A24 took a risk when most other companies would not and that it has become as successful as it has because the stories it puts into the spotlight deserve to be heard.
While A24 is already a big success story, the company has really only begun. There are so many more stories left to tell, and I am excited to see where the future takes this amazing company.
