A24’s recent cash infusion is just the latest flash of its Wall Street DNA

More than any other contemporary film studio, A24 has cultivated a recognizable vibe, one that is synonymous with artistic integrity. They put out edgy movies from auteur filmmakers, winning critical and commercial acclaim while operating under relatively low budgets. Which is why last week’s news that A24 took $75 million last week from Thrive Capital, a heavy investor in OpenAI, struck some obsessive fans as betrayal. Their auteur darling was not, it seems, above collaborating with the enemy of creativity.

Except A24 was never really above corporate chess. Whether or not they end up using OpenAI’s text-to-video model Sora one day to helm a film, it’s not a total shock that A24 partnered with one of the company’s investors. It may be more romantic to think of A24 as a farm-to-table conduit of pure originality and impeccable aesthetics, but the reality is that fiscal shrewdness is baked into the brand’s DNA. The company’s Wall Street roots have always been evident in A24’s output—just beyond the frame.

The A24 founders—David Katz, previously led the film finance department at global investment firm Guggenheim Partners, as well as David Fenkel and John Hodges, who come from film production companies Oscilloscope and Big Beach Films, respectively—don’t give interviews very often. They prefer instead to let the story of A24 speak for itself. The studio shot out of a cannon in 2013, when its third film, Spring Breakers, became a neon-drenched cultural moment. The studio took home a Best Picture trophy for Moonlight four years later, and then swept the Oscars with Everything Everywhere All at Once in 2023, a decade into its existence. Along the way, A24 also minted a stable of filmmakers who are like the Avengers of acquired taste: the Safdie brothers (Uncut Gems), Ari Aster (Midsommar) and Jane Schoenbrun (I Saw the TV Glow), among others.

Last week’s capital infusion, in which Thrive valued the studio at $3.5 billion, is just the latest sign that A24’s executives have their eyes on a more commercial future. Beyond the company’s previous Wall Street investment—taking in $225 million in equity from a group of investors in early 2022—the studio has made overtures toward new audiences. Last fall, A24 reportedly went after the rights to the Halloween franchise (though it lost out to Miramax), and a deal to partner up with the NFL for a series of films (which went instead to Skydance.)

If the phrase “the NFL, brought to you by A24” has some cinephiles fans running for the exits, though, those fans have not paid enough attention. A strong business sense has clearly been guiding the studio from the start.

The business of making art

A24 hasn’t just been greenlighting every Riley Keough project with a disturbing premise that comes down the pike. Their roster is the result of careful curation. Each release carries the calculated risk of a stock investment. Sometimes the stock pops, as was the case with this year’s Alex Garland-directed dystopian thriller Civil War, which more than doubled its $50 million budget (A24’s highest yet) and has now become A24’s second-biggest hit ever, behind Everything Everywhere All at Once.

But the risk of increasingly higher budgets cuts both ways. Last summer, the studio gave red-hot director Ari Aster $35 million, its biggest budget yet at the time, to make his experimental three-hour epic Beau Is Afraid, starring Joaquin Phoenix. A deeply strange movie, even by A24 standards, it was box office poison, making back about a third of its budget. Still, even in defeat, the logic was obvious: Let your star filmmaker do whatever he wants with a relatively big budget and, best-case scenario, it’s an unlikely commercial hit; worst-case scenario, it becomes a cult classic within a few years and in the meantime, Aster is happy to stick around and hopefully helm A24’s next big hit.

The studio also has, to put it in stock terms, a diversified portfolio. Every time the general public thinks they have a handle on what exactly “an A24 movie” even is, they release something like Bo Burnham’s gentle coming-of-age tale, Eighth Grade, or the gritty family drama, Earth Mama, which redefines or complicates that impression. And the team behind A24 is extremely concerned with impressions.

The business of making a splash

Merchandise, for A24, is both a moneymaker and a way to build out the company’s reputation. Over the past five years or so, it’s helped them transform from a movie brand into a lifestyle brand. Never mind exactly what defines an A24 movie, one can now ask that same question about “an A24 kind of person.”

The studio’s merch goes far beyond the typical hat-and-hoodie fare, instead encompassing books, zines and questionable home furnishings, like a decorative Bear in a Cage from Midsommar or the unmentionable trophy from Everything Everywhere All At Once. They have been performing an object lesson in the importance of memorable objects, ever since they sent a gun-shaped bong to Spring Breakers producer Megan Ellison, to convince her of A24’s commitment.

A24’s reputation for exceptional, highly targeted marketing is also a demonstration of its business savvy. Hipsters didn’t start stocking up on A24 gear out of pure affinity for the films; they were courted and won over by smart partnerships with other hot brands like the clothing company Online Ceramics and Half Magic beauty.

The business of doing business

What’s interesting, however, is that A24 is still seen as more likely to partner up with, say, Hasami pottery brand Maruhiro than it is with mega-corporations.

The studio teamed with Apple in 2018, at the outset of the company’s streaming ambitions, to produce films for Apple TV+ like 2020’s On the Rocks, starring Rashida Jones, and TV series like the upcoming Sunny, also starring Rashida Jones. More recently, A24 made a deal with Warner Bros Discovery to stream all of its new films—and most of its core library—exclusively on Max.

The fact that an association with these conglomerates doesn’t seem to stick to A24’s arthouse image, though, is a strong sign that investment from Thrive Capital probably won’t either.