Two days ago, in my compilation of things that are inevitable in Hollywood, I wrote, “The scrappy indie studio that has success with good taste and smart marketing gets cocky, ups its budgetary spending, and then crashes and burns.”
Many assumed I was talking about A24 when I wrote that, but I was really more generally thinking of every independent would-be mini-studio since the dawn of Hollywood — from the original United Artists on down to Miramax.
There’s a reason no one has created a studio to rival the majors that has lasted since the dawn of Hollywood and up until this very moment: Moviemaking is a terrible, unpredictable business, and if your bets start getting too big, you put everything wildly at risk. Everybody hits a cold streak eventually. Everybody. The cost of losing everything on a bunch of movies in a row is the real barrier to entry.
So A24 had a massive hit this weekend. Well, massive by intramural standards. Its biggest opening. The biggest film of the weekend. All well and good, but a $25 million opening on a budget of $50 million? 60? 70? That sounds more like a bullet dodged than a runaway success.
Which is fine. Good for them if they can break even on a midrange movie. Thing is, A24 is still acting like a little micro-budget indie. It’s still being held to the standards of a micro-budget indie where any trace of success is a giant victory.
But it’s not making films like a micro-budget indie. In recent months, the scrappy upstart is consistently taking some big swings — moving out of the indie sphere and into that dangerous middle range where Lionsgate lives. And the results through that lens are not so spectacular.
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