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Can we share how it started?
Alison Willmore:They have very good taste in movies.
Theyre good at picking directors to work with, at buying movies when they buy movies.
But they, more than anything else, are an incredible triumph of branding.
And when youre watching, youre like, Oh, this is weird.
AW: Played by Harry Potter.
Played by Harry Potter.
When you look back at some of these marketing campaigns, theyre truly genius.
When A24 was releasingEx Machina,theymade a fake Tinder chat botto help plug the movie.
ForHereditary, theysent out creepy dolls to influencers and critics.
Its really genius.AW: Breaking through and having people even hear about your movie is a huge challenge.
Its even more of a challenge now; theres just so much noise.
They were acquiring movies and then helping to distribute them.
That changed withMoonlightin 2015.
They helped make that movie from the start.
NJ: Yeah, mostly boys.
Trey Edward Shults is one.
The Safdie brothers are two more.
They acquiredGood Time, and then they producedUncut Gems.
For Ari Aster, they produced bothMidsommarandhis upcoming film,Disappointment Boulevard.
Robert Eggers, same: They acquiredThe Witch, producedThe Lighthouse.
Mostly boys.NJ: Mostly boys.
AW: Its a movie about Asian and Asian American immigrants, this family split over two experiences.
When you look at a lot of early A24 stuff, it was pretty white.
How big of a deal should we think A24 is?
A24 may be this big story, but how else do people pick things to watch?
Marvel, Disney, a lot of just massive brands that people just essentially kind of hitch themselves to.
Do you like that?
I dont think its a better way of choosing things than, like, following a person.
How much of that is the merch?
One of my friends yesterday was raving about hisA24 fleece.
What is that?NJ: Thats a very big part of it.
No ones walking around in a Focus Features hoodie the way that they are in A24 stuff.
In the greater scheme of things, though, how much does A24 actually matter?
Im obsessed with their coolness, but are they just their own little island?
It is worth knowing that compared to their predecessors, they are genuinely independent.
Focus Features is a division of Universal; Searchlight Pictures is a division of Fox.
A24 has investors, but they are not owned by a major studio.
Its cool to know about these movies.
