Stay plugged in to the industry with our free newsletter. And it was like a snowy and rainy day, and there was a ton of traffic. Villeneuve: If my memorys good, I was amongst their, not their first movies, but they were a young company at the time. Its trio of foundersDaniel Katz, David Fenkel, and John Hodges, whod known each other through years of work in New Yorks indie movie circuitrarely granted interviews. It wasnt just that, for a new distribution company, it seemed to have a level of taste and an instinct for cool that is atypical in Hollywood. Noah Sacco (head of acquisitions and production, A24): I think some of our biggest movies had no stars in them at the time of releaseEx Machina, Moonlight, The Witch, Room, The Spectacular Now. Fenkel: Id love to say from the first cut we knew. And someone was like, Where did those images come from? And I was like, Google? Denis Villeneuve (director, Enemy): I never saw them as businessmen. I still think that its morally questionable, but now I realize that the publicity people do stuff, and that stuff is real.. And then over the course of, like, four months, we bought a lot of movies. Radcliffe (actor, Swiss Army Man): I could see them saying, like: Weve got a reputation now, and have money now. A lot of people in that position would then go, Okay, lets become quite conservative in our choices. And whats lovely is they are choosing to still channel that stuff back into supporting weird, different, ambitious ventures. Then he had this very high-tech, nuanced process, which was printing out a spreadsheet, and then when he would book a theater, he would write it down on the spreadsheet, and then when the spreadsheet was full, hed push it over from his desk to my desk. A24s initial funding came via an infusion of capital from Guggenheim Partners, the investment firm at which Katz previously oversaw film financing. I say, Dont go there. Because what happened was, someone ran out with a red envelope. They were not the company that they are today. Beyer: It was all about this tension between, like, trying to legitimize ourselves as a real company that can handle working with, like, big. Franco: I hope they dont get too big that they forget what got them started. Youre incredible. He later left A24 on March 2018 to focus on future opportunities. [18] In June, the company, along with Oscilloscope and distributor Honora, joined BitTorrent Now to distribute the work of their portfolio across the ad-supported service. Like, no way in hell. Thats the chief message of an A24 campaign, really, from elegant design to sharp social media to clever co-branding choices: This is a company that gets it. Whether thats old white people in the Academy, or people all over the country, or frankly the rest of the world. Its a film about guilt that forever haunts you and the fear of being watched. Also Read: Sundance, SXSW Comedy 'Never Goin' Back' Sells to A24, John has been a trusted partner who helped conceive A24 and for that we will always be grateful, the studio said in a statement. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED | TERMS OF USE|SUBSCRIBE|CONTACT. Daniel Radcliffe (actor, Swiss Army Man): Ive had experiences on films in the past where they get bought by somebody who sees something in it that they like, which is nice, but it also happens to be notand is sometimes antithetical towhat the people who made the film wanted it to be. This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged. And then its like on the biggest stage, I didnt thank anybody! The company has laid the groundwork to evolve from just another upstart distribution label into a multiheaded ministudio capable of developing its own contentand so far theyve done it by releasing movies that tend to earn more cultural cachet than they do money. No!. John Hodges (co-founder and co-head of TV, A24): It was one of those conversations where it was always like, How would we do it differently? And it was usually fueled by beer and things scribbled down on napkins and a lot of bravado. But we got A Glimpse Inside the Mind. Our site's data suggests A24's net worth to be about $1.89 million. His relationship with talent and creators is exceptional and we look forward to having him make Jax his new home.. I think when movie companies get started, people want to define you immediately. Other indie labels, like Megan Ellisons Annapurna Pictures (which co-produced Spring Breakers), tend to go in the other direction, releasing a minuscule handful of movies into the currents of Oscar season in the hopes that the waters will carry them toward a crowd. There has been speculation for the past six months that the company is for sale. And I felt with these guys it was a dialogue. This is before Wolf of Wall Street came out, but Margot Robbie, I didnt know her, but she was working with somebody that knew my costumer or something, and got in touch with me and was like, Can you print me a photo of the tattoos in detail, so that I can get this costume perfectly? Because she was fucking Alien that year. A24 may not yet inspire the same kind of blind devotion in theatergoers that the Criterion Collection does in home video obsessives, but its the only indie distributor that feasibly could. But what happens when the titles involved in this deal get bettera lot better? As of 2023[update], the company's films had received a total of 49 Academy Award nominations. And Im not saying theyre magicians. @ After a brief flurry of acquisitions gossip, and Monday's announcement that A24 co-founder John Hodges will exit the company, A24 and/or Apple "insiders" let it be known that Apple wasn't. A24 was set up ten years ago by David Fenkel, John Hodges and Daniel Katz, all veterans of New York's independent film business. A24 was founded on August 20, 2012, by film veterans Daniel Katz, David Fenkel, and John Hodges. The company said he will exit to focus on "future opportunities," but did not clarify beyond that statement.. Were passionate. With Hodges leaving, the. Fenkel: Look at The Witch. Garland: I didnt know what Tinder was until the festival. In between, A24 went from being a tiny, disorganized room of eight or so people to being the place where big stars like Robert Pattinson and Scarlett Johansson go to make small, strange movies, and auteurs like Jonathan Glazer and Denis Villeneuve go to make deeply personal films unmolested by studio notes or clueless executives. Losing a movieI wanted to jump off a bridge. Suddenly, in order to be financially viable, a project has to cost less than $2 million or more than $200 million. Wouldnt call us back. So, how much is Johnny Hodges . So I suppose the question now surrounding A24 is what Fenkel and Katz plan to make of it. In 2013, A24 released their first five films: Sally Potters Ginger & Rosa, Harmony Korines Spring Breakers, Sofia Coppolas The Bling Ring, James Ponsoldts The Spectacular Now, and Roman Coppolas A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III, starring Charlie Sheen. Without the same star power or effects as your typical studio horror film, these scary movies rely on mood, style and character to create a feeling of dread, rather than jump scares. Its super inspiring. You could tell that they wanted to be great. And they even never uttered the words, What would it be like in a cheaper state? Theyre one of the few companies that have shown that indie films can still be viable. GQ may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Cond Nast. A24 was founded in 2012 by Daniel Katz, David Fenkel and John Hodges. Get our latest storiesin the feed of your favorite networks. Gif excerpt from the film Slow West via A24 Films. Rather than carpet-bomb the whole country with prohibitively expensive television ads, A24 partnered with a social marketing agency called theAudience in order to more precisely reach its target demographic. That kind of audience. Because even the companys failures are interesting. That suits a company whose websites About page consists of nothing beyond an Eadweard Muybridge plate of a cockatoo flapping its wings. Prior to joining Jax in 2019, John was a founding partner of A24, where he helped oversee acquisition and distribution on some of the company's roster of more than 70 films, which includes Spring Breakers, Ex Machina, Amy, Lady Bird, and Best . Katz: Some of it was probably misplaced, dont you agree? [10] The company's first theatrical release was Roman Coppola's A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III, which had a limited release. Please, just let those two!. A24 founding partner John Hodges announced that he will be leaving the indie studio that he helped launch nearly six years ago, the company announced Monday. Yes, Scream VI Marketing Is Behind the Creepy Ghostface Sightings Causing Scares Across the U.S. David Oyelowo, Taylor Sheridan's 'Bass Reeves' Series at Paramount+ Casts King Richard Star Demi Singleton (EXCLUSIVE), Star Trek: Discovery to End With Season 5, Paramount+ Pushes Premiere to 2024. I was like, I think I need to find another job., Aizenberg: They were basically like, Dont release this movie.. We are thrilled to have someone of Johns pedigree join the Jax Media team and lead our expansion into the film world, Jax Media partners Tony Hernandez, Lilly Burns, John Skidmore, and Brooke Posch said in a joint statement. junio 12, 2022. cottage for sale in timmins on . We allowed them to come on set to see what was happening, and they in turn were sharing their release plans and their marketing materials, and we were commenting on that. That shift points to a greater move afoot at A24, as the company begins to develop its own projects from within. But I remember vividly that they had chosen some specific movies, one of which was Under the Skin. And with the opening weekend, with the numbers that we did, it became very clear that, yes, this is a viable strategy, to keep this very small, gay, art-house hood-ass filmlike, yeah, were just gonna keep it in theaters. BREAKING: John Hodges, one of the founding members of A24, has announced his departure from the production and distribution studio to focus on future opportunities. The monster at the center of The Babadook is a personal demon, not a literal one. The question with any company that lavishes attention and resources upon a modest amount of product is, of course, where does the money come from? Pattinson: Theyre definitely the place to be now. Itd be very unlikely for that to happen. Franco: All the distributors knew it was great. A24 co-founder John Hodges is exiting the indie companyto focus on future opportunities, he and the company jointly announced on Monday. Were gonna put it in theaters, and were gonna find a way to keep it there. Now, look, at that point, none of us were thinking, Hey, were gonna win Best Picture! But we wanted to give the movie the chance to have as much of a life as we possibly could. Which, if you look two years back, theres just no way in hell anybody would have thought that A24 would finance a film like Moonlight and release it in the way they did, to the tune of a Best Picture and $55 million in international box office. Nandan: I remember seeing a screener of [The Witch], and yeah, it was like, oh, right, howd that movie not sell for more money? They just need to know how it feels.. A24 knew that Slow West was great well before it premiered to rave reviews, but the company also recognized that it was an odd duck, neither broad enough to be a prestige picture nor strange enough to galvanize a legion of fans. Were gonna get there on time. They have a very good understanding of the Zeitgeist. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. We tried to put together a slate in, like, four months, as opposed to just really growing it, building it in the right way. Ask for forgiveness. I think it just showed that we cared about these movies so much. I found it so deep in Google Image searches. Since then, A24's success has been immeasurable, especially for an independent Production company founded the same year The Avengers came out. Kapadia: There were other films that had a lot more money in their campaign and were everywhere. As of April 2022[update], twenty-seven episodes had been released. If its gonna be released the same way by another company, we usually dont go after it. January, February, we didnt know we had The Lobster. So when I saw that, I was like, Okay, those guys, they know what they are doing..