A24's Cult Following Won't Cut It Anymore And This 2018 Box Office Flop Can Help Explain Why
(Welcome to Tales from the Box Office, our column that examines box office miracles, disasters, and everything in between, as well as what we can learn from them.)
A24, in the span of a decade, has become one of the most trusted names in Hollywood for a certain breed of moviegoer. Though not nearly as big as legacy studios such as Disney or Warner Bros., A24 has garnered a voracious cult following. They release movies that veer far from the mainstream such as the farting corpse flick "Swiss Army Man," Kevin Smith's wild body horror film "Tusk," and the Best Picture winner "Everything Everywhere All at Once." They may not make billion-dollar popcorn flicks, but they sure as heck have carved out a unique brand. That A24 logo means something to people. That carries a certain value.
Unfortunately, that value doesn't always show up on the balance sheet. Yes, A24 has had hits over the last decade, including Ari Aster's "Hereditary" and Greta Gerwig's critical darling "Lady Bird." But the studio has had more misses than hits, with director Alex Garland's "Men" and Trey Edward Shults' "Waves" serving as a couple of examples, but there are dozens. At best, many A24 films do decent business against small enough budgets, but the much-adored company has had very few films breakthrough in the mainstream.
As a result, to the chagrin of many, necessary change is coming. The company is apparently now going to look to make more audience-friendly and franchise projects in the hopes of carving out a more financially secure future. The realities of the business have finally caught up with them, it seems.
In this week's Tales from the Box Office, we're going to look back at one A24 movie, 2018's "Under the Silver Lake," and use it as a jumping-off point to look at the larger picture for the studio. We'll look at how the movie came to be, how it went from promising to disastrous, how it's emblematic of A24's larger business, and what lessons can be learned from it as the studio preps for major change. Let's dig in.
The movie: Under the Silver Lake
David Robert Mitchell hit a critical home run in 2015 with his wildly acclaimed horror film "It Follows." It's impossible to buy the kind of positive press the filmmaker received for his inventive take on the genre. The film was a success, taking in more than $23 million at the box office against a budget of less than $2 million. It may not have been a runaway hit, but it was a hit nonetheless, and the buzzy nature of the film put Mitchell on the map. Rather than do the safe thing and make another horror movie, the filmmaker (who was already in his 40s) made something wildly different with his follow-up, "Under the Silver Lake."
Described as a "deliberately overcomplicated surrealist neo-noir," the film centers on Sam (Andrew Garfield), a disenchanted man in his 30s who encounters an enchanting woman named Sarah (Riley Keough), who vanishes shortly after their brief but memorable encounter. Sam then embarks on a surreal quest across Los Angeles to decode the secret behind her disappearance, leading him into a bizarre search for truth.
Even though "Silver Lake" isn't easy to classify, and ended up clocking it at a pretty hefty 140 minutes, Mitchell was able to secure $8 million in financing to make the film, largely thanks to the success of "It Follows." But the filmmaker knew that he wasn't making a safe bet. "The goal was to make a bold statement. It's an intentional shot across the bow, a bit of a f***-you. I'm sure there will be a range of reactions," Mitchell said to Vulture in 2019 ahead of the film's U.S. release. A release that was delayed several times by A24, it's worth adding. More on that in a moment.
Alleged misogyny and a mixed reception
A24 picked up the domestic rights to the film before production even began in late 2016. All eyes were on Mitchell, given the success and acclaim he had enjoyed with his previous film. The director got the red carpet treatment after years of struggling to make it in Hollywood, with "Under the Silver Lake" premiering at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival in 2018.
Response to the film was mixed. Many of those who disliked it were less than kind. Kristen Lopez called it "a giant piece of gold-flaked poo that thinks it's special" in her review for Culturess. Leigh Monson, writing for Birth.Movies.Death, wrote, "The pretense of muddling nonsense with intellectual rigor means that it will forever be impossible to consider Under the Silver Lake as anything other than an exercise in smugness from a creative mind that has only the barest grasp on the theses it posits."
Many of those who liked it really liked it. That helps to explain the film's cult following. But some of the criticisms were extra troubling, as it was accused by some of being misogynistic. Mitchell, in that same Vulture piece, pushed back against those accusations.
"Some people have perceived the film to be misogynistic, which is personally very painful. I just so strongly disagree. This character is disconnected from the world and is struggling with feelings of misogyny – that's a core element of what this movie is about. I assume that most people will see him beating up children and staring at women's asses as offensive behavior, and I don't think I need to constantly tell everyone that. For people to imagine that we're celebrating it is just disappointing."
The financial journey
Despite the mixed response, Mitchell didn't recut the film. Sometimes early festival reactions can prompt re-edits, but that didn't happen here. "In all honesty, the Cannes experience was wonderful and terrible," Mitchell said to the New York Times in 2019. "But it was always intended to be a kind of a bold film, so for me to shy away from that and to be hurt by some negativity, I think it would probably be a little bit silly."
"Under the Silver Lake" ended up being released in several overseas markets first in late 2018. A24 originally had it on the calendar for June of 2018, before pushing it back to December of that year and, eventually, all the way to April 2019. It's easy to imagine this was in response to the divisive nature of the film. In any case, it hit theaters on Easter weekend, debuting on just a couple of screens on April 18, 2019. The movie took in $35,270 on just two screens, but was already removed from those theaters by the following weekend. As a result, it made just $46,00 at the domestic box office. Coupled with what it made overseas, the film topped out at $2.8 million globally. A straight-up disaster for a movie that cost $8 million to make before any marketing costs were even factored in.
Mitchell's much-anticipated follow-up was released on VOD mere days after its incredibly limited theatrical run to little fanfare. That was that. With next to no mainstream buzz, the movie never made much noise and has been left to languish on digital marketplaces and on Blu-ray. Mitchell has also not directed a movie since. He was developing "Heroes & Villains" for MGM back in 2020, and he's currently got a mysterious film in the works for Warner Bros. that will star Anne Hathaway. But the fact that a filmmaker with so much buzz has been sitting on the sidelines for five years now is remarkable.
The A24 situation in a nutshell
For as much as fans of A24 really love A24, what happened with "Under the Silver Lake" is closer to the normal for the studio than it is an outlier. The company took a chance on a director who was on the upswing and put their faith in him despite the fact that his film didn't have a commercial-friendly bend. It backfired. Similar things have happened time and time again over the years.
We can look at J.C. Chandor's "A Most Violent Year" ($8.8 million worldwide/$20 million budget), Jeremy Saulnier's "Green Room" ($3.8 million worldwide/$5 million budget), or last year's "Marcell the Shell with Shoes On" ($6.9 million worldwide/$6 million budget) as a few examples of disappointments. Most of the time, when A24 wins, they win relatively small with movies like "The Spectacular Now" ($6.9 million worldwide/$2.5 million budget) or "Mid90s" ($9.1 million worldwide/$1.7 million budget). Those wins aren't really enough to make up for the big losses, and those losses have been mounting as of late.
The Wrap reported that A24 has recently been searching for "action and big IP projects" and that the studio is "deemphasizing the traditional character/auteur-driven dramas." The report also stated that the studio lost $35 million on Ari Aster's flop "Beau is Afraid" this year alone, and millions on other films such as "Waves" and David Lowery's acclaimed "The Green Knight." Acclaim, sadly, only gets you so far.
A24, for all of the acclaim, has only released 16 movies that have made at least $20 million at the box office. Of those 16, only six have made $50 million or more. "Everything Everywhere All at Once" is the only one to crack $100 million. The studio has produced more than 120 films in total. That's why we now have a "Friday the 13th" TV show called "Crystal Lake" in the works at the studio. They need more surefire things in the pipeline.
The lessons contained within
It may hit like a kick in the teeth to A24 loyalists to hear that things are changing but, unfortunately, this is a business that is driven by art. If the business side of it doesn't work, it's destined to fail. And A24 has done a lot to capitalize on its successes, including selling expensive merch. You can buy a replica hand from "Talk to Me" that burns incense for a cool $110, for example. Not every studio can get away with that. It speaks volumes about the loyalty they've earned.
At the same time, the way things are going, A24 feels doomed to fail. They can't continue to suffer major misfires like "Under the Silver Lake" and expect to realistically survive in an increasingly difficult and unpredictable media landscape. So yes, they do need to focus on audience-friendly movies and building franchises. That's why they wasted no time in greenlighting a sequel to "Talk to Me." Doubling down on the wins is good business. It's also why they were pursuing the rights to the "Halloween" franchise, with Miramax ultimately winning the deal.
A24 must learn from the misfires of the past. And if they do, cinema will be better off for it. We need a studio bold enough to make movies like "Moonlight" and "Eighth Grade." But that studio could also use bigger hits to help make it possible for them to make more movies like that in the future. And, ideally, would it be so bad for A24 to put a franchise like "Friday the 13th" through its unique filter? Good things can come from this new strategy as well. At the very least, this new strategy may give them a better shot at survival, and that's the key here. It's adapt or die. It's time to adapt. One can only hope that the spirit of what they've built remains.