Post by The Ultimate Nullifier on Feb 5, 2018 18:56:33 GMT -6
www.indiewire.com/2017/03/a24-neon-blumhouse-moonlight-get-out-colossal-distribution-1201791026/
Beyond A24: How Hip New Distributors Are Targeting Millennial Tastemakers With Bold Films
A24 has succeeded at energizing a young cinephile audience. Here comes the competition.
Eric Kohn
Mar 8, 2017 12:06 pm
No one will forget the Best Picture award ceremony at the 2017 Academy Awards, but there’s a detail lost in the shock and recriminations: It was the moment that announced A24 as an industry gamechanger. Five years after the distributor supported unorthodox indies like Harmony Korine’s “Spring Breakers” and Jonathan Glazer’s “Under The Skin,” A24 saw its $1.5 million poetic drama “Moonlight” pull off a surprise best-picture win — one that led to a stunning $2.5 million box-office take in the film’s 20th week of release.
In less than five years, A24 has galvanized a young cinephile audience that seemed so elusive, some doubted its existence. A24 certainly wasn’t the first to identify this demo; predecessors such as Magnolia, RADiUS, and Oscilloscope saw the same potential, and created some of the marketing tactics that now have become playbook. However, A24 had the advantage of a business strategy, and backing, that committed to this audience, and they responded by embracing the label as a safe haven for edgy, boundary-pushing movies free from middlebrow arthouse sensibilities or Hollywood dreck. The company has proved this demo is voluminous, powerful, and most of all, valuable.
And with that, here come the challengers.
First up is Neon, launched by veterans Tom Quinn and Tim League. While the label is new, the names are not: For two decades, Quinn has been one of the more passionate advocates for outré genre cinema and conversation-starting documentaries in the American independent scene, from his early days at Samuel Goldwyn Films to a lengthy stint at Magnolia through his most recent venture at The Weinstein Company, where he co-founded the multi-platform label RADiUS-TWC. League is probably the best-known exhibitor in the country, co-founding the funky Alamo Drafthouse theater chain in addition to experimenting with a distribution label of his own, Drafthouse Films.
While Neon has yet to speak publicly about its intentions (and turned down requests for comment on this article), the combined sensibilities of League and Quinn — good friends known for fraternizing on the wacky frontlines of League’s celebrated genre festival Fantastic Fest — suggest a natural meeting of the minds, as well as a keen combination of resources.
The company quietly went into action last year, when rumors swirled out of the Toronto International Film Festival of a “mysterious Chinese buyer” taking U.S. rights to Nacho Vigalondo’s postmodern monster movie “Colossal,” starring Anne Hathaway. That turned out to be Neon, with financing from SR Media, Jackie Chan’s film company. (Quinn and League first attempted to kickstart their company with another backer in 2015, releasing Michael Moore’s “Where to Invade Next” with mixed results and going back to the drawing board.)
Around the same time, Neon nabbed theatrical rights to Iranian-American director Ana Lily Amirpour’s genre-busting cannibal love story “The Bad Batch,” for which Netflix acquired digital rights out of the Venice Film Festival. Amirpour, a festival discovery for her 2014 debut “A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night,” initially sold the movie to Screen Media before changing course. Sources close to the deal say that Amirpour felt much more comfortable with her sophomore effort in the hands of League and Quinn, who are known for channeling their enthusiasm for offbeat movies into aggressive marketing strategies.
“They may be somewhat unproven, but we have a strong level of comfort based on the people involved,” said Submarine Films sales agent Josh Braun. “They’re not some brand-new company that just happens to have some money.”
League’s Drafthouse theaters have hosted everything from cricket-eating contests for the release of “Bellflower” to pot-smoking bus rides with Paul Thomas Anderson for “Inherent Vice.” Quinn’s acquisitions resumé is a laundry list of festival darlings that tipped into mainstream culture, including “Raising Victor Vargas,” “Super Size Me,” the original Swedish version of the coming-of-age vampire drama “Let the Right One In,” Oscar winners “Citizenfour” and “Twenty Feet From Stardom” as well as Bong Joon-ho’s celebrated action-dystopia “Snowpiercer,” which famously confronted the latest “Transformers” sequel at the box office in an ambitious strategy that involved a collapsed window between its theatrical and VOD release dates.
RADiUS launched in late 2011, roughly the same time as A24, and frequently went head-to-head with the company on the festival circuit — Quinn and his cohorts entered competitive offers on both “Spring Breakers” and “Under the Skin,” among other titles, in some cases offering bids just a touch smaller. At the same time, RADiUS successfully landed a number of films that found success in the ever-complicated multiplatform market, including “Bachelorette,” which ranked highly on both iTunes and cable VOD in addition to making close to $12 million. “We built this company from the ground up,” Quinn told IndieWire at the time. “We are really hitting our stride.”
But RADiUS had to contend with the more problematic shadow of The Weinstein Company, most notoriously when Harvey Weinstein attempted to recut Bong’s “Snowpiercer” without the director’s permission before Radius took it over. At Neon, Quinn and League have no awkward in-house rivals.
Neon began 2017 eager to make its mark, reportedly taking part in the late-night Sundance buyer frenzy for hip-hop crowdpleaser “Patti Cake$” and coming in second place to Fox Searchlight, which bought the movie for around $10.5 million. But Neon didn’t go home empty handed, scoring a hip-hop breakout of its own with Michael Larnell’s ’80s-set “Roxanne Roxanne” for an estimated $3 million; it also picked up the Aubrey Plaza comedy “Ingrid Goes West” for around the same amount. A few weeks later, the company announced its acquisition of Errol Morris’ “The B-Side: Elsa Doorman’s Portrait Photography,” putting Quinn back in business with a filmmaker with whom he had last collaborated on “The Unknown Known.”
While that title speaks more to the executive’s filmmaker history, the rest of the emerging slate makes it clear Neon may provide A24 a lot of company in theaters very soon. One distinguishing characteristic of A24’s releases is its ability to apply the playful mentality of a millennial audience in its marketing strategies, from the “Consider This excrement” campaign for James Franco in “Spring Breakers” to the viral campaign on Tinder for the release of “Ex Machina.” These approaches allowed the company to circumnavigate some of the traditional P&A costs associated with wide theatrical releases.
“It’s pretty obvious,” said Cinetic Media sales veteran John Sloss when asked about Neon’s strategy. “They’re going to target millennials and focus on genre. Their goal is to find a way to reach a specific audience through social media without breaking the bank on traditional media.”
It doesn’t hurt that League owns a major indie theater chain. While the company has yet to guarantee any acquisitions will play on Drafthouse screens, much of its existing slate gels with the brand. “Tim’s a smart utility player to have on your team,” Sloss said. “He hasn’t really stepped up historically in terms of distribution, but there’s no indication he can’t.”
For agents like Sloss, the success of A24 and promise of Neon speak to a far-reaching agenda. “They’re finding ways to do broader releases without having to spend the kind of money that it usually takes to get to 2,000 screens,” he said. “That’s the holy grail of the moment.”
They’re not the only ones chasing it. The same night that “Moonlight” triumphed at the Oscars, the $4 million racially charged horror-satire “Get Out” made a startling $30 million on its opening weekend, offering further proof that the lo-fi efforts from genre factory Blumhouse were paying off. The company, founded by Jason Blum, has been churning out cheap genre installments of “Paranormal Activity” and “The Purge” for the better part of a decade. But it has also managed a versatile approach that fits the fragmented marketplace.
Blum handpicks films in production for its distribution deal with Universal — including “Get Out,” which was a natural fit for a wide release, and M. Night Shymalan’s secret franchise launch “Split,” one of 2017’s first big box office hits. The company also launched more idiosyncratic effort, like the found-footage horror-comedy “Creep,” which went straight to Netflix, wasting no time on challenging theatrical odds. He also acquires other films for limited release through the Blumhouse Tilt label, such as the 2016 Sundance sleeper hit “Sleight.”
For Blum, being nimble is key. “The audience right now is very fractured,” he said. “The ancillary value of these movies has gone up a lot. Now there are so many outlets. It’s a bunch of tangled wires.” In his case, “we watch a movie with an audience and our marketing team, then decide the way to sell it to a broad audience. We try to figure out if it’ll make people leave their sofa for a few hours or not.”
That challenge has only increased for longtime distributors in the indie space, most of whom target older moviegoers. That’s not changing anytime soon. Many established players like Bleecker Street, Sony Pictures Classics, and Roadside Attractions target older audiences with festival hits that have national appeal. “We remain committed to cultivating our aging boomer demo,” said Kino Lorber CEO Richard Lorber. “We love expanding our base, but chasing the elusive millennial may be ill-conceived.”
Needless to say, the emerging field of newer buyers don’t see it that way.
While League continues to manage the Drafthouse brand, his Drafthouse Films label is no longer acquiring titles and the existing team has set its sights on the newer venture. The New York-based Quinn has already started building a cadre of familiar faces, including several former RADiUS staffers and Los Angeles-based distribution perennial Jeff Deutchman, best known for his work at IFC Films, Paramount, and Alchemy, a company that was beset by bankruptcy woes. After a brief stint consulting the programming team at the Tribeca Film Festival, Deutchman is back in action, and will be scouting for titles at the upcoming SXSW Film Festival.
“If Neon loves a film and makes a respectable offer that’s a good fit for the filmmakers, then they could get it,” said Braun, who represented Morris’ film in the Neon sale. “It’s great that there’s a legitimate distributor in the mix. We feel confident it’s a good fit.”
At a time when viewer habits shift on a daily basis, these companies may be one step ahead of Hollywood studios in an effort to get younger audiences excited about new releases. “The audience is there,” said Sloss. “Whether they consume movies in theaters is becoming less and less critical. But there are people from the millennial generation interested in audiovisual storytelling. The one genre that always has an audience is something new.”
Beyond A24: How Hip New Distributors Are Targeting Millennial Tastemakers With Bold Films
A24 has succeeded at energizing a young cinephile audience. Here comes the competition.
Eric Kohn
Mar 8, 2017 12:06 pm
No one will forget the Best Picture award ceremony at the 2017 Academy Awards, but there’s a detail lost in the shock and recriminations: It was the moment that announced A24 as an industry gamechanger. Five years after the distributor supported unorthodox indies like Harmony Korine’s “Spring Breakers” and Jonathan Glazer’s “Under The Skin,” A24 saw its $1.5 million poetic drama “Moonlight” pull off a surprise best-picture win — one that led to a stunning $2.5 million box-office take in the film’s 20th week of release.
In less than five years, A24 has galvanized a young cinephile audience that seemed so elusive, some doubted its existence. A24 certainly wasn’t the first to identify this demo; predecessors such as Magnolia, RADiUS, and Oscilloscope saw the same potential, and created some of the marketing tactics that now have become playbook. However, A24 had the advantage of a business strategy, and backing, that committed to this audience, and they responded by embracing the label as a safe haven for edgy, boundary-pushing movies free from middlebrow arthouse sensibilities or Hollywood dreck. The company has proved this demo is voluminous, powerful, and most of all, valuable.
And with that, here come the challengers.
First up is Neon, launched by veterans Tom Quinn and Tim League. While the label is new, the names are not: For two decades, Quinn has been one of the more passionate advocates for outré genre cinema and conversation-starting documentaries in the American independent scene, from his early days at Samuel Goldwyn Films to a lengthy stint at Magnolia through his most recent venture at The Weinstein Company, where he co-founded the multi-platform label RADiUS-TWC. League is probably the best-known exhibitor in the country, co-founding the funky Alamo Drafthouse theater chain in addition to experimenting with a distribution label of his own, Drafthouse Films.
While Neon has yet to speak publicly about its intentions (and turned down requests for comment on this article), the combined sensibilities of League and Quinn — good friends known for fraternizing on the wacky frontlines of League’s celebrated genre festival Fantastic Fest — suggest a natural meeting of the minds, as well as a keen combination of resources.
The company quietly went into action last year, when rumors swirled out of the Toronto International Film Festival of a “mysterious Chinese buyer” taking U.S. rights to Nacho Vigalondo’s postmodern monster movie “Colossal,” starring Anne Hathaway. That turned out to be Neon, with financing from SR Media, Jackie Chan’s film company. (Quinn and League first attempted to kickstart their company with another backer in 2015, releasing Michael Moore’s “Where to Invade Next” with mixed results and going back to the drawing board.)
Around the same time, Neon nabbed theatrical rights to Iranian-American director Ana Lily Amirpour’s genre-busting cannibal love story “The Bad Batch,” for which Netflix acquired digital rights out of the Venice Film Festival. Amirpour, a festival discovery for her 2014 debut “A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night,” initially sold the movie to Screen Media before changing course. Sources close to the deal say that Amirpour felt much more comfortable with her sophomore effort in the hands of League and Quinn, who are known for channeling their enthusiasm for offbeat movies into aggressive marketing strategies.
“They may be somewhat unproven, but we have a strong level of comfort based on the people involved,” said Submarine Films sales agent Josh Braun. “They’re not some brand-new company that just happens to have some money.”
League’s Drafthouse theaters have hosted everything from cricket-eating contests for the release of “Bellflower” to pot-smoking bus rides with Paul Thomas Anderson for “Inherent Vice.” Quinn’s acquisitions resumé is a laundry list of festival darlings that tipped into mainstream culture, including “Raising Victor Vargas,” “Super Size Me,” the original Swedish version of the coming-of-age vampire drama “Let the Right One In,” Oscar winners “Citizenfour” and “Twenty Feet From Stardom” as well as Bong Joon-ho’s celebrated action-dystopia “Snowpiercer,” which famously confronted the latest “Transformers” sequel at the box office in an ambitious strategy that involved a collapsed window between its theatrical and VOD release dates.
RADiUS launched in late 2011, roughly the same time as A24, and frequently went head-to-head with the company on the festival circuit — Quinn and his cohorts entered competitive offers on both “Spring Breakers” and “Under the Skin,” among other titles, in some cases offering bids just a touch smaller. At the same time, RADiUS successfully landed a number of films that found success in the ever-complicated multiplatform market, including “Bachelorette,” which ranked highly on both iTunes and cable VOD in addition to making close to $12 million. “We built this company from the ground up,” Quinn told IndieWire at the time. “We are really hitting our stride.”
But RADiUS had to contend with the more problematic shadow of The Weinstein Company, most notoriously when Harvey Weinstein attempted to recut Bong’s “Snowpiercer” without the director’s permission before Radius took it over. At Neon, Quinn and League have no awkward in-house rivals.
Neon began 2017 eager to make its mark, reportedly taking part in the late-night Sundance buyer frenzy for hip-hop crowdpleaser “Patti Cake$” and coming in second place to Fox Searchlight, which bought the movie for around $10.5 million. But Neon didn’t go home empty handed, scoring a hip-hop breakout of its own with Michael Larnell’s ’80s-set “Roxanne Roxanne” for an estimated $3 million; it also picked up the Aubrey Plaza comedy “Ingrid Goes West” for around the same amount. A few weeks later, the company announced its acquisition of Errol Morris’ “The B-Side: Elsa Doorman’s Portrait Photography,” putting Quinn back in business with a filmmaker with whom he had last collaborated on “The Unknown Known.”
While that title speaks more to the executive’s filmmaker history, the rest of the emerging slate makes it clear Neon may provide A24 a lot of company in theaters very soon. One distinguishing characteristic of A24’s releases is its ability to apply the playful mentality of a millennial audience in its marketing strategies, from the “Consider This excrement” campaign for James Franco in “Spring Breakers” to the viral campaign on Tinder for the release of “Ex Machina.” These approaches allowed the company to circumnavigate some of the traditional P&A costs associated with wide theatrical releases.
“It’s pretty obvious,” said Cinetic Media sales veteran John Sloss when asked about Neon’s strategy. “They’re going to target millennials and focus on genre. Their goal is to find a way to reach a specific audience through social media without breaking the bank on traditional media.”
It doesn’t hurt that League owns a major indie theater chain. While the company has yet to guarantee any acquisitions will play on Drafthouse screens, much of its existing slate gels with the brand. “Tim’s a smart utility player to have on your team,” Sloss said. “He hasn’t really stepped up historically in terms of distribution, but there’s no indication he can’t.”
For agents like Sloss, the success of A24 and promise of Neon speak to a far-reaching agenda. “They’re finding ways to do broader releases without having to spend the kind of money that it usually takes to get to 2,000 screens,” he said. “That’s the holy grail of the moment.”
They’re not the only ones chasing it. The same night that “Moonlight” triumphed at the Oscars, the $4 million racially charged horror-satire “Get Out” made a startling $30 million on its opening weekend, offering further proof that the lo-fi efforts from genre factory Blumhouse were paying off. The company, founded by Jason Blum, has been churning out cheap genre installments of “Paranormal Activity” and “The Purge” for the better part of a decade. But it has also managed a versatile approach that fits the fragmented marketplace.
Blum handpicks films in production for its distribution deal with Universal — including “Get Out,” which was a natural fit for a wide release, and M. Night Shymalan’s secret franchise launch “Split,” one of 2017’s first big box office hits. The company also launched more idiosyncratic effort, like the found-footage horror-comedy “Creep,” which went straight to Netflix, wasting no time on challenging theatrical odds. He also acquires other films for limited release through the Blumhouse Tilt label, such as the 2016 Sundance sleeper hit “Sleight.”
For Blum, being nimble is key. “The audience right now is very fractured,” he said. “The ancillary value of these movies has gone up a lot. Now there are so many outlets. It’s a bunch of tangled wires.” In his case, “we watch a movie with an audience and our marketing team, then decide the way to sell it to a broad audience. We try to figure out if it’ll make people leave their sofa for a few hours or not.”
That challenge has only increased for longtime distributors in the indie space, most of whom target older moviegoers. That’s not changing anytime soon. Many established players like Bleecker Street, Sony Pictures Classics, and Roadside Attractions target older audiences with festival hits that have national appeal. “We remain committed to cultivating our aging boomer demo,” said Kino Lorber CEO Richard Lorber. “We love expanding our base, but chasing the elusive millennial may be ill-conceived.”
Needless to say, the emerging field of newer buyers don’t see it that way.
While League continues to manage the Drafthouse brand, his Drafthouse Films label is no longer acquiring titles and the existing team has set its sights on the newer venture. The New York-based Quinn has already started building a cadre of familiar faces, including several former RADiUS staffers and Los Angeles-based distribution perennial Jeff Deutchman, best known for his work at IFC Films, Paramount, and Alchemy, a company that was beset by bankruptcy woes. After a brief stint consulting the programming team at the Tribeca Film Festival, Deutchman is back in action, and will be scouting for titles at the upcoming SXSW Film Festival.
“If Neon loves a film and makes a respectable offer that’s a good fit for the filmmakers, then they could get it,” said Braun, who represented Morris’ film in the Neon sale. “It’s great that there’s a legitimate distributor in the mix. We feel confident it’s a good fit.”
At a time when viewer habits shift on a daily basis, these companies may be one step ahead of Hollywood studios in an effort to get younger audiences excited about new releases. “The audience is there,” said Sloss. “Whether they consume movies in theaters is becoming less and less critical. But there are people from the millennial generation interested in audiovisual storytelling. The one genre that always has an audience is something new.”