A24, the studio behind 'Everything Everywhere All at Once,' is the 'cool kid' of Hollywood

• A24's "Everything Everywhere All at Once" is the front runner to win the best picture Oscar this year.
• The film's popularity has once again put the studio — and its cult-like following — front and center.  
• A24 has become the "cool kid" studio of Hollywood by following a different playbook.

With the Oscars quickly approaching, one thing has become abundantly clear: "Everything Everywhere All at Once" is going to have a big night — and with that, so is A24, the studio behind it.

The film was already a frontrunner when Oscar noms were announced in late January, scoring 11, the most of any movie this year. Having recently won the top prizes at all the major guild awards — Producers Guild, Directors Guild, Writers Guild, and Screen Actors Guild — "Everything" is the odds-on favorite to take home best picture.  

So there'll likely be a lot of champagne flowing Sunday night. Regardless of how many little gold men A24 takes home, the studio has once again proven that unconventional and original stories are what moviegoers want, and that's made them the cool kids of the business and the envy of all the other studios in Hollywood. 

Let's look back. I'm sure you've heard of a few of these: "Spring Breakers," "Ex Machina," "The Witch," and "Moonlight." There's also "Lady Bird," "Eighth Grade," "Midsommar," and "Uncut Gems." Plenty of companies have come (and gone) that have a knack for feeding the appetites of moviegoers who crave original stories, but A24 is different.

It has consistently made great movies and built a cult following unlike anything the movie industry has seen since Miramax was at its zenith in the mid-1990s.

And A24 is using a very different playbook to pull it off.

The 'trick' to A24's success is not interfering with filmmaker creativity

Thanks to savvy marketing, A24 has cultivated what every entertainment company, both large and small, craves: an air of effortless cool.

A24's founders, Daniel Katz, David Fenkel, and John Hodges (who previously all worked within the indie film world before teaming up), have ushered in a new era of filmmaking and marketing. It's set apart from Miramax's indie film era, which was dominated by Harvey and Bob Weinstein's full-court press Oscars campaigns that fed audiences low-budget and foreign movies like never before.

Where the Weinsteins — Harvey in particular — were known for sometimes brutally re-editing films behind filmmakers' backs, A24 has become a haven for storytellers who want little to no interference. And where the Weinsteins loomed larger than life, Katz, Hodges (who left the company in 2018), and Fenkel rarely give interviews, creating a sense of mystery around the studio and leaving room for A24 to elevate what it brings to screens.

A24 is remarkable at championing specific cinematic voices because they genuinely adore their films — and that enthusiasm is reflected in the creativity and laser-like precision of their marketing and releases. Filmmaker James Ponsoldt, "The Spectacular Now, "The End of the Tour"

"They've done a great job of being synonymous with quality. That's a trick," a producer, whose identity is known to Insider but requested anonymity, told me.

That has been the key to A24's success. A company can be elusive and have fun with marketing, but if the product isn't successful, the rest of that doesn't matter. The "trick" A24 has pulled off is that it has showcased movies rich with creativity and wonder that find both critical and box office acclaim. You just can't turn away from what they offer.

"We find movies [for which] our perspective, our system, our people, can act to make it something special," Fenkel said in a rare interview with GQ in 2017 that the studio's goal is to find movies that it can turn into "something special."

"If it's gonna be released the same way by another company, we usually don't go after it," he added.

A24 is 'trying to sell the film by not selling it'

The trio formed A24 in 2012 and quickly became benefactors of the early days of meme culture with their third release, "Spring Breakers." The 2013 film, featuring Disney Channel pop princesses Selena Gomez and Vanessa Hudgens drinking and toting guns, saturated social media and became a hallmark of the risky and unapologetic storytelling the company wanted to get behind.

At the time, the company was acquiring finished movies and distributing them with novel, Millennial-forward marketing campaigns ranging from an "Ex-Machina"-themed Tinder bot to a Twitter account for the satanic goat in "The Witch." A24 focused much of its marketing on grassroots social media rather than on billboard or commercial spends. These internet-first campaigns made younger viewers feel like they were part of an exclusive group of hip cinephiles. 

That ethos may be best summed up by the company's former head of marketing and partnerships, Jesse Patrone-Werdiger. In a 2013 interview with the Los Angeles Times, Patrone-Werdiger said the company was "cognizant of trying to sell the film by not selling it, by tapping into elements of it that are really evocative and compelling to people in a way that does not register as something they want to spend money on."  

One way to do that was through thoughtful brand extensions — sleek and limited edition merch, collabs with other cool, hip brands, and going big with influencers. All of this coalesced into making A24 not just a studio, but a cultural litmus test, a lifestyle, a personal brand. You had to see these movies to be a part of the conversation.

Fervor around the studio only increased in 2016 when A24 produced its first movie, Barry Jenkins' "Moonlight." Now putting skin in the game, the company (which currently finances or produces most of its releases, including "Everything Everywhere All at Once") used all of its tools and scored 10 Oscar nominations for the drama. The film then became part of the most shocking moment in Academy Awards history (pre-slap, anyway) when it won best picture over "La La Land."

The great thing about A24 is that they're always up for a challenge. They remain undaunted; they'll take the most difficult, unsaleable aspect of your movie and turn it into its greatest asset. Filmmaker David Lowery, "A Ghost Story," "The Green Knight"

In that moment, A24 went from indie chic studio to serious Hollywood player. It's maintained that status by staying clear of the safe bets and panic moves most other studios have leaned into in the last several years. 

What other studio might greenlight a $25 million budget on a movie about a Chinese-American immigrant who, while being audited by the IRS, discovers she must connect with other versions of herself so that a powerful force doesn't destroy the multiverse? A24 did, and "Everything Everywhere All at Once" has gone on to gross more than $100 million worldwide, making it the highest-grossing A24 release to date.

It's an impressive feat seeing that at the time of its release, the pandemic was still making audiences nervous about returning to theaters. But unlike other studios and specialty houses, A24 didn't lean into streaming to the exclusion of theatrical releases. It stood firm that its titles would entice people back to the big screen, and it has paid off.

A24 not giving up on theatrical in 2022 led to it becoming the sixth-largest domestic box office studio, trailing only the legacy Hollywood studios — Disney, Universal, Paramount, Warner Bros., and Sony.

The cult of A24 is only going to grow

Search around the internet and it won't take long to notice the fandom of A24. It's rare to say that about a movie studio, but it's true. 

There are fan-created movie posters of A24 titles on Instagram. Someone famously chronicled their A24-themed party on TikTok, complete with the host channeling Florence Pugh in "Midsommar" with a flower crown. There's an A24 subreddit, an A24 Wiki fandom page, even A24 fanfiction.

They have the type of fealty that other studios wish they could inspire. 

On Sunday, keep an eye out for the other A24-related nominations from titles including: "The Whale," "Marcel the Shell with Shoes On," "Close," "Aftersun," and "Causeway." The studio has 18 nods in total, the most of any studio this year. With Oscar win(s) all but guaranteed, the brand is inching ever closer to becoming a household name.

"Moonlight's" director, Jenkins, might have put it best while pondering what the future held for A24 while talking to GQ in 2017.

"I put no limitations on what they're capable of."