How A24 Took over Hollywood [video] | Hacker News Reader

How A24 Took over Hollywood [video]

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A24, I think, hit upon something that had been nagging at me for years in that Hollywood films are massive productions, several million dollars get poured into them. Not every film is a Marvel $250 million undertaking, but the recent Puss in Boots sequel costs about $90+ million, Dungeons and Dragons cost $150 million, heck even Halloween Ends cost $33 million (add a grain of salt for each of these figures). What's missing? $1 million, $5 million, $10 million.

This space between low budget and medium budget was, for a little while, nearly non-existent. With these budgets, you don't have to be that successful to get your investment in the black. It allows you to make riskier films, and there is clearly a market for films of depth and creativity. It boggles the mind that Halloween Ends required more budget (I assume it's mostly marketing) than Everything Everywhere All at Once, it's just about a guy killing people, in fairness one of those people was Jamie Lee Curtis.

Even better, Jamie Lee Curtis was in both of those movies.

Martin Scorsese and others have complained about this, but tend to get shouted down by Marvel enthusiasts, but yes: the mid-range films from studios have largely evaporated; as they run more like any other business, the focus is entirely on ROI and not at all on art, whereas studios (for most of their history) tended to balance out ruthless financials around their money-makers with a desire to set aside some of the profit for low-return, mid-budget works that skew more to the art side of things.

I went to see many small to mid sized films in the 1990s - 2000s, and heres the thing: it was often just 3 or 4 other people in the cinema. Seems like a misallocation of resources. The old system wasn't perfect either.

Nowadays the energy, ingenuity and talent that would have gone into making smaller films is instead going into making premium TV. I can see why cinema purists are upset by the shift to streaming, but as an audience member I'm currently getting an unlimited buffet of content on 3 streaming services paying about what I would have paid back in the day to see 3 movies.

Are you not entertained?

> Nowadays the energy, ingenuity and talent that would have gone into making smaller films is instead going into making premium TV.

I hate this. I think 80-110 minutes is a good amount of time to tell a story. It's enough time to develop characters and build a world, but it's short enough that to be effective a film has to be ruthlessly edited.

Stories for TV are so bloated. Series like Stranger Things, Servant, The Last of Us and Russian Doll would have been perfectly suited to the movie format, but instead they get padded out to 8-hour seasons.

I should note I don't think this is true of all series, by any means. Lots of stories are well suited to the series format, like Succession, Dahmer or The Boys. And I know my opinion won't be a popular one because the runaway success of long bloated stories shows us which way the winds are blowing.

I have a similar opinion about series. They tend to become either repetitive or implausible over time, and they rarely have a decent ending. Too much time to fill and too little ability to plan ahead to avoid these.

The theatrical releases were probably a waste but these movies made their money on vhs and dvd sales. However, direct to dvd was considered a bargain bin only movie without prestige and theater appearances were and are required for Oscar contention so even then theater releases did make some economic sense.

On paper, a lot of these movies should have moved to direct to streaming but haven’t for whatever reason.

Yeah it's surprising how shallow the back catalogues of all the streaming services are. Currently they don't seem to be incentivised to acquire the rights to older content, because the flashy new stuff is what reels in the flashy new customers.

Would there be demand for a streaming service to host older quality content under a new umbrella, or maybe just a retro focused offshoot of an existing streaming service? Kind of like one of those old timey video stores that specialised in rare cult classics.

Martin's Scorsese's last film, The Irishman, cost over $175 million (not including marketing)...which actually puts it over the budget of most Marvel movies.

At least he put it into use considering it has a runtime of 3 hours and 29 minutes. Marvel only gives you about two hours for $175 million!

>the focus is entirely on ROI and not at all on art

A relation of mine went to England's best known acting school. Graduated and went to LA to start her career. Quit within two years saying, "I always thought it was about the art. It's not."

$10 million hasn't been "medium" budget for Hollywood since the 1990s. In 1995, the average cost of a Hollywood film was approximately $34million. By 2003, that number had ballooned to $59 million. (https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1995-03-08-fi-40252-...)

Today, the threshold for "medium budget" is somewhere around $30 million, with the threshold for "high budget" somewhere around $90-100 million.

Also, A24 is as Hollywood as you can get. Their offices are located in WeHo. All of their films are the kinds of films that Fox Searchlight and New Line Cinema specialized in.

(With respect to the films you mentioned, Puss in Boots and Halloween Ends both achieved profitability during their theatrical runs. D&DHAT did not make its budget back in theaters and is not expected to achieve profitability for several years if ever; it is very likely that it will not get a sequel, or if it does the sequel will have a much smaller budget.)

Yes this is the exact point he is trying to make.

No, his point was that A24 is not doing the "typical" Hollywood thing, by focusing on low-to-mid budget films.

My point was that A24 (which is based in Hollywood) is just doing what New Line Cinema and Fox Searchlight (also based in Hollywood) did before them. New Line has since graduated to mid-to-high budget films due to the success of their early films like Scream. Searchlight still distributes arthouse films but under Disney has a significantly smaller budget to produce or acquire films; it's arguably more indie than A24 is now.

Blumhouse is the only big name actively doing 5-10 million movies.

Their trick is that they give a percentage to the actors and director and just a flat basic fee. Even "big" stars like Jennifer Lopez didn't get a million up front - she actually even used her own clothes for her Blumhouse horror movie.

They make a few flops, but their hits offset those easily. Paranormal Activity (their first one I think?) had a budget of $15k and made over $190 million in the box office.

Their guerilla marketing techniques, such as paying botfarms to submit fake 5 star reviews to imdb or letterboxd is not really appreciated. This was going on for years. I have to catch those cheaters manually, and block them for my cannes ratings overview.

But just recently the Robert Rodriguez, Wes Anderson and Martin Scorsese marketing campaigns just did the very same, taking over the dirty tricks from A24. Ingenious Media I assume. Also someone is paying several real people money to submit fake 5 start reviews. All blocked.

https://letterboxd.com/film/hypnotic-2023/members/rated/.5-5... https://letterboxd.com/film/killers-of-the-flower-moon/membe... https://letterboxd.com/film/asteroid-city/members/rated/.5-5...

Hate it

The traditional Hollywood-way is extortion. Just as in the Johnny Depp premiere from yesterday in Cannes, the director wanted to cut his 12 minutes to 2 minutes, or better off completely. But then the Hollywood sales agents came close to the director whispering, "when you cut off Johnny Depp, you'll get no distribution in the US. Your choice." And they even made sure that she will stand next to him on the red carpet, which she never planned to do in her wildest dreams.

What distinguishes real reviews from fake reviews?

See for example this paid shill:

https://letterboxd.com/dr_challis/activity/

I'm talking ratings, not reviews

Maybe the target isn't A24 but they're here just to make it look more legitimate?

Of course this very video might be part of their marketing.

Anyway nice to have a new way to filter on stuff I might enjoy watching.

https://www.movieinsider.com/c3384/a24 that's what I have bookmarked to track films by studio (A24 in that example)

Very happy that they did. They offer a diverse array of movies (some great, some terrible) that are a breath of fresh air when compared to the typical Hollywood blockbusters. (Different audience, sure, but definitely less formulaic).

Hollywood is so stuck it’s painful. They’re literally just remaking the same 15 or so movies over and over, mostly with the same actors.

Our culture is STUCK.

begs the question: where is our robert bresson in our hyper-banal modernity?

Counterpoint: it’s our culture that’s stuck.

Hollywood DOES make tons of original films every year. Many of the large studios have specific subsidiaries just to produce or distribute a wide range of originals.

The issue is that known franchises will always be a relatively safe bet. Audiences don’t reward novelty, with the exception of the few breakthrough hits. Audiences generally want to spend their money and time on known entities.

That people think Hollywood is “stuck remaking films” is testament to how little attention people pay to stuff outside the mainstream.

This is why Marvel is so successful and why their strategy was brilliant. Early Marvel films were often stinkers like Thor/Thor2 but people keep going back for more because each new film cements them safely in people’s minds.

People don’t generally care if the film will be great. They’ll happily go see mediocre films because they’re risk averse.

I’ve worked for years in film. The most banal remakes always did way better in box offices than the really unique and critically acclaimed films.

Hollywood is a reflection of audiences, and capitalism demands appealing to the majority

> Hollywood is a reflection of audiences, and capitalism demands appealing to the majority

100% agree with your thesis. Appeal to the average consumer for soaking up maximum, predictable, risk-free money.

> > Counterpoint: it’s our culture that’s stuck.

Yeah, our culture isn't stuck. It's just average value of consumer tastes (as vetted by the market) that are.

Look at TikTok and Twitter, "Harry Potter Balenciaga" [1] and all the other weird memes. How quickly things get riffed on and incorporated into our collective consciousness and vocabulary.

Hollywood marketing can't keep up with the zeitgeist because it moves so fast. It's fickle, fleeting, risky, and unpredictable.

Niche interests are super long tail anyway. A24 is doing a good job at picking off large sub populations of indie/art house filmgoers (not exactly niche), but ultimately it's going to take a dramatic reduction in cost structures to cater to the entirety of the human interest graph.

I think we'll get there in the next 10-20 years. Generative AI and creative sandboxes like Unreal, Roblox, and VRChat will give creators the ability to make anything. We're not there yet, but we can start to see over the hill.

[1] Granted, this is a riff on the non-A24 film, "Triangle of Sadness" (though A24 tried to win the bid to buy it themselves)

Our culture is stuck because of the insanely long copyright terms and mass media that has produced them.

Disagree. I'd expect long copyright to give more incentive to create something not based on existing work. Did the world really need "Pooh - Blood and honey"?

Do you know why we got "Pooh - Blood and Honey"? Because you for sure cannot make a children's book with new stories with the characters without getting sued by Disney.

A slasher horror is about the only thing you can do without getting sued into submission, due to ridiculous trademark and copyright laws.

Pooh is out of copyright so unless you're copying the Disney adaptations you can do whatever you like. If you want to make a slasher film, just make a slasher film with original characters, maybe it will even be good. My point is you don't need existing IP to adapt.

Pooh might be out of copyright, but the corporate media has found a way around that by using trade marks.

So anything related to Children's books (or any books, drawing books, comics, anything) cannot come with "Winnie Pooh", "Winnie the Pooh" or similar, cannot have a golden-brown bear, not a pinky Piglett or a stripy Tigger.

Humans have always been adapting existing "IP" to their own uses. Just look at the many ways that Odysseus has been adapted - It's like a cinematic universe of old. Humans have always been remixing and reshuffling things.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remix_(book)

It's the decline of DVD sales.

Big budget Hollywood films are designed to appeal to the lowest common denominator. Why did the mid-budget sector (the one that can take risks with creativity) drop out leaving us with either indie films or big budget films? According to Matt Damon[1], it's the obsolescence of the DVD market that changed the calculus of mid-budget films.

When a structural change affects the economics of content, it's difficult to localize the problem and envision a remedy. Unfortunately, these economic systemic problems tend to shut down our capabilities to affect change rather than enhance them. In some ways it's more convenient to envision the problem as being a problem of movie studio executives and their choices, than a media economy problem with a change in financial relations.

1. Matt Damon | Hot Ones https://youtu.be/yaXma6K9mzo?t=841

A24 is such a great studio. Seeing their logo is almost like the "Nintendo Seal of Quality" from back in the day - if it's at the front of a trailer, I know I'll probably be interested.

Shouldn't the title be "How A24 took over Hollywood"?

HN has an auto de-clickbaiter. It removes the "How"

Rehowed. Thanks!

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