4 ms·

How A24 Took over Hollywood [video]

69 points by zdw 3y ago

echelon 3y ago
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.
jwilber 3y ago
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).
- ed25519FUUU 3y ago
  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.
  - 50 3y ago
    begs the question: where is our robert bresson in our hyper-banal modernity?
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - dagmx 3y ago
    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
    - echelon 3y ago
      > 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)
  - esarbe 3y ago
    Our culture is stuck because of the insanely long copyright terms and mass media that has produced them.
    - bzzzt 3y ago
      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"?
      - esarbe 3y ago
        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.
        bzzzt 3y ago
        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.
        esarbe 3y ago
        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. Copyright has taken that away from us. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remix_(book) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remix_(book)
  - kelseyfrog 3y ago
    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 https://youtu.be/yaXma6K9mzo?t=841
darknavi 3y ago
Shouldn't the title be "How A24 took over Hollywood"?
- dang 3y ago
  Rehowed. Thanks!
- quickthrower2 3y ago
  HN has an auto de-clickbaiter. It removes the "How"
quickthrower2 3y ago
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.
- schemathings 3y ago
  https://www.movieinsider.com/c3384/a24 https://www.movieinsider.com/c3384/a24 that's what I have bookmarked to track films by studio (A24 in that example)
bexsella 3y ago
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.
- maclockard 3y ago
  Even better, Jamie Lee Curtis was in both of those movies.
- rodgerd 3y ago
  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.
  - HlessClaudesman 3y ago
    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?
aaron695 3y ago
[dead]
rurban 3y ago
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/hypnotic-2023/members/rated/.5-5... https://letterboxd.com/film/killers-of-the-flower-moon/members/rated/.5-5/ https://letterboxd.com/film/killers-of-the-flower-moon/membe... https://letterboxd.com/film/asteroid-city/members/rated/.5-5/ 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.
- byproxy 3y ago
  What distinguishes real reviews from fake reviews?
  - rurban 3y ago
    See for example this paid shill: https://letterboxd.com/dr_challis/activity/ https://letterboxd.com/dr_challis/activity/ I'm talking ratings, not reviews
- rospaya 3y ago
  Maybe the target isn't A24 but they're here just to make it look more legitimate?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

69 points by zdw 3y ago

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.

jwilber 3y ago

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).

ed25519FUUU 3y ago
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.
- 50 3y ago
  begs the question: where is our robert bresson in our hyper-banal modernity?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- dagmx 3y ago
  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
  - echelon 3y ago
    > 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)
- esarbe 3y ago
  Our culture is stuck because of the insanely long copyright terms and mass media that has produced them.
  - bzzzt 3y ago
    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"?
    - esarbe 3y ago
      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.
      - bzzzt 3y ago
        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.
        esarbe 3y ago
        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. Copyright has taken that away from us. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remix_(book) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remix_(book)
- kelseyfrog 3y ago
  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 https://youtu.be/yaXma6K9mzo?t=841

darknavi 3y ago

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

dang 3y ago
Rehowed. Thanks!
quickthrower2 3y ago
HN has an auto de-clickbaiter. It removes the "How"

quickthrower2 3y ago

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.

schemathings 3y ago
https://www.movieinsider.com/c3384/a24 https://www.movieinsider.com/c3384/a24 that's what I have bookmarked to track films by studio (A24 in that example)

bexsella 3y ago

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.

maclockard 3y ago
Even better, Jamie Lee Curtis was in both of those movies.
rodgerd 3y ago
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.
- HlessClaudesman 3y ago
  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?

aaron695 3y ago

[dead]

rurban 3y ago

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

byproxy 3y ago
What distinguishes real reviews from fake reviews?
- rurban 3y ago
  See for example this paid shill: https://letterboxd.com/dr_challis/activity/ https://letterboxd.com/dr_challis/activity/ I'm talking ratings, not reviews
rospaya 3y ago
Maybe the target isn't A24 but they're here just to make it look more legitimate?
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]