A24's Empire of Auteurs
newyorker.com
newyorker.com
Is there a reason they spelled out 1630s, like a style guide?
- Land Rover building reputation with their rugged Defender and then cashing in on that by pivoting to a far less capable luxury SUV. Same with most off road cars.
- North Face making serious mountaineering gear to suburban fashion brand with reduced quality.
- Blue Bottle going from a high quality local SF chain to scaling internationally under Nestle. (and quality taking a hit)
etc, etc...
Once a brand accumulates sufficient reputational capital through genuine quality, the profit-maximizing imperative inevitably drives extraction over quality. (I would extend this argument briefly outside of the domain of economic theory and into physics: we do not observe low entropy being temporally consistent anywhere in the universe.)
The market doesn’t reward maintaining expensive quality standards when cheaper alternatives can temporarily coast on accumulated goodwill - shareholders demand margin expansion, private equity needs returns, and the competitive landscape punishes companies that leave money on the table by over-investing in product integrity.
Less of a moral failure by individual companies and more structural incentive alignment: capitalism systematically rewards converting hard won brand trust into extractable rents until the reputation is depleted, at which point capital simply moves to the next target.
The pattern you’re observing isn’t a bug but the logical endpoint of a system that treats reputation as just another asset to be optimized for shareholder value rather than a covenant with customers.
the writing was on the wall once they won their first Oscar.
but, at least they've proven that there is success to be had in creating new IP. there will be people who will watch your movies if you actually create something new. the cycle of nothing but sequels, remakes, and universe movies has been hilariously bad for years.
we do still have the unfortunate reality that most of the studios have been bought up and are run by people who are ... to be kind ... bean counters who have no affinity for movies. but the bright side to this is we will almost certainly have another massive independent movie bonanza similar to the late 90s to fill that void.
Regardless of who's making them ot how, films have lost the qualities of contemplation and of making the audience draw their own conclusions. That's an even bigger marker of cultural and educational decline than the fact that franchises have been cannibalizing themselves for at least 30 years since our golden age ended.
Attempts to capture truth mutate into displays of pathos (and bigger explosions) when civilizations are on their way out.
> The studio is brilliant at selling small, provocative films. Now it wants to sell blockbusters, too.
God damnit. The best modern film studio in the world about to become a slop house.
The world is missing low budget and mid-market. There's so much appetite for it. We don't need more blockbusters. The world needs the product A24 is delivering now.
Almost everyone on HN has witnessed something similar happen in our spheres. We've all seen the marketing dept, accounting dept, and VC chodes band together and push the engineers into the background. They forget the engineers are the people who made the magic happen for the product in the first place. And then, before we know it, the equivalent of a private equity enshitification is happening and its either stripped to nothing of substance or it just coasts along and does the absolute bare minimum to survive. All the heart of the product gone. I know it sounds dramatic, but they kill its soul. I think almost everyone here has seen this happen directly to our own things or to other products.
It looks like they're trying their best to do the same thing to movie studios. Investment firms are buying up studios across the board. Marketers, ad companies, and investors will do their best to suck all of the soul out of movies the same way they're doing it to our field. Pushing the movie makers into the background just like they do to engineers.
The difference from my perspective and the reason I'm not too concerned is this: the tech industry is relatively young and up until recently many of us (myself included) have found ourselves worshiping at the VC/investor's alters. We find ourselves buying into their hype.
Artists on the other hand see the VC/investor's slop alters and see that alter demanding they make a shitty product. In typical artist fasion, they take a long look at that alter, unzip their pants, laugh, and piss on that alter.
While artists have long since learned what happens when you worship at those alters, we in the tech field are just finding out. They've known this since before our industry was even born.
I think this is why we've seen so many phases where movies/music makers, if they have to, they'll just make cheap movies. A good cheaply made movie is still better than a high budget slop shit movie. People show up for good movies, even cheap ones. People forgive the low budget quality if its great.
At the end of the day this is why I'm not too concerned about the future of movies. I have no doubt great movies will still be made. Some of my favorite movies were made outside those people's alters, cheap af. I mean, who doesn't love Halloween or Evil Dead or Clerks!? All of them were made cheap af.
Always remember, Clerks was made by a dude while working as a convenience store clerk. A convenience clerk made it using his credit cards. He had basically no budget.
A24 is kind of looking like United Artists, a studio that produced many critically acclaimed films in the 1970s. What was UA's downfall? A move into bigger budget films. One bigger budget film, specifically: Heaven's Gate (1980), directed my Michael Cimino. The production went so over budget it bankrupted the studio and that marked the end of that era of auteur driven cinema.
Let's hope A24 doesn't make the same mistake, because as it is about half the new films I saw in theatres and enjoyed over the last decade came from A24, or from a director who has worked with A24.
I mean satanic parties? Not because some of their employees are satanists, but because they like the look?
They know they’re going to miff some people, and one of them is me.
I don’t care what religion their employees are. But when they’re endorsing one religious group to piss off another?
I don’t have to like it, and I don’t. Plenty of movies coming out. Plenty I haven’t seen that came out years and decades ago.
If they weren’t in such a competitive market, i probably wouldn’t care. But they’re so easy to avoid, why not?
Is it the religious mockery that bothers you or something else?
Religion should not be off limits to mockery, satire, etc
It’s a bit of an unfair question to ask, because the Pythons are competing with A Clockwork Orange, not to mention Oscar Wilde, Alexander Pope, and Chaucer. English religious mockery is a crowded market - even Thomas More took part.
But this wasn’t even religious mockery. They weren’t actually mocking anybody directly.
They were doing it very indirectly by supporting a group that is by itself is perfectly legitimate, but goes out of its way to offend others by its practices. But it doesn’t seem the group actually did anything offensive.
They supposed to be edgy by their mere presence.
It’s religious mockery by proxy, which isn’t funny or insightful. From the description, it doesn’t seem anybody was laughing. Certainly not the audience (us).
The Satan of the Bible isn’t that dissimilar from Heaphestus - a divine being that gave humanity something the gods reserved for themselves so we could better our lot in life ourselves. Just because Christians decided to make him an evil figure, doesn’t mean everyone else has to agree, especially since Satan is responsible for punishing the evil souls sent to Hell which seems like a righteous mission.
The Old Testament predates Christianity.
> especially since Satan is responsible for punishing the evil souls sent to Hell which seems like a righteous mission
The Bible doesn’t say anything about Satan’s responsibilities. You’re probably referring to fanfic works, such as Milton or Dante.
But outside Genesis, it’s hard to support a Prometheus narrative. The bet made with God in regards to Job is not very empowering to humans.
But I don’t think they’re throwing satanic parties to grow appeal among satanists, or because some of their employees happen to be Satanists - the two reasons companies embrace religious celebrations.
Maybe I’m wrong - maybe they’re trying to brand their movie “The Witch” as a modern Satanist movie, and get a built in audience. Maybe.
What’s more likely is they are trying to be edgy. And they failed. Inviting a bunch of Satanists as a marketing ploy is boring. It’s like something out of marketing satire.
I’m reminded of how Silicon Valley lampooned Satanism the way Monty Python lampooned Christianity.
It’s not offensive. It’s just boring.
Hephaestus is traditionally described as a “fallen God living under Mt. Olympus.” Not evil, but the most imperfect - although not weakest - of all the Gods.
Also, as a master craftsman, he was called upon to build things other gods destroyed.
That’s Homer’s take. The Roman Virgil saw him very different.
I had assumed when you said Hephaestus, you meant Hephaestus, but another commenter pointed out you may have meant Prometheus.
Blackmore drew up a document enshrining their shared goal: “Create a
narrative and controversy that transforms ‘The Witch’ into an iconic film.”
The satanists planned the parties; A24 minded the guest list, and canvassed
butchers in search of a pig’s head, for ritual use.
as I understand the relatively clear text I was reading A24 wanted to market The Witch, so they made a deal with the Satanic Temple, part of the deal for marketing purposes was to have parties after some showings of The Witch, the person who seemed to like the "look" was mainly Joe Blackmore who was from the Satanic Temple and in charge of planning the parties.
So yes it is true that they did it to generate controversy which would help get lots of free press for their movie which meant people went to see it which got them money to make more movies.
>But when they’re endorsing one religious group to piss off another?
of course the way they generated the controversy was because having Satanic parties would be guaranteed to piss off one particular religious group, which it seems really is the group the Satanic Temple exists to piss off.
I guess making a deal with someone could be seen as a form of endorsement, but in the case of religions it generally isn't seen that way.
This is a ridiculous take.
The Satanic Temple is about as much of a “real” religious group as The Church of the Sub-Genius or Pastafarians. If you’re equating them with other organized religions… well honestly, they probably find it hilarious that someone is taking them this seriously.
Y’know what, nevermind, carry on. Fight the good fight!