Oscars 2023: All eyes on A24, the studio behind Everything Everywhere All At Once and The Whale

Watch Everything Everywhere All at Once on OTTplay
Watch The Whale on OTTplay

Six years ago, when Moonlight won the Oscar for Best Picture, the night was best remembered for the mix up on stage that had the team of La La Land walking up to receive the trophy at first. Back then, not many spoke about the independent studio that had backed Barry Jenkins’ coming-of-age film of a black queer man. It’s a different story now, as the indie studio A24 is all everyone can talk about and here’s why…

Today, it is the studio that enabled four actors – Brendan Fraser for The Whale and Michelle Yeoh, Jamie Lee Curtis and Ke Huay Quan for Everything Everywhere All At Once - to bag the top acting honours at the 95thAcademy Awards, besides also winning Best Picture (Everything Everywhere All At Once), Directing (Everything Everywhere All At Once), Editing (Everything Everywhere All At Once), Make-up and Hair Styling (The Whale) and Original Screenplay (Everything Everywhere All At Once). The studio had other nominations too, like, Close (Best International Feature Film), Aftersun (Paul Mescal for Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role), Causeway (Bryan Tyree Henry for Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role) and Marcel the Shell with Shoes on (Best Animated Feature Film).

Established in 2012 by Daniel Katz, David Fenkel and John Hodges, A24 began as a distribution firm acquiring finished projects, which has then gone on to back films like Minari, Ladybird, The Farewell, Uncut Gems, Midsommar, as well as the Emmy-winning series Euphoria, among others, earning the indie studio the distinction of being the biggest supporter of creativity and quality - meaning original, and sometimes quirky, content. According to reports, the studio’s gameplan is simple, make films ranging in budget between $5 million and $50 million, which gives it the leeway to have a go at out-of-the-box ideas. Often, the filmmakers and stories that others don’t bet on, find a platform at A24.

What A24 also specialised in is giving their films non-traditional marketing campaigns, pouring all efforts and merchandise into social media, by collaborating with influencers and other brands too, helping them connect with the younger, hip crowd. For instance, the rubber hot dog fingers and googly eyes from Everything Everywhere All At Once were a huge rage.

In less than a decade, A24 has grown to be the recipient of a whopping 53 Oscar nominations, 18 of which came this year, including the 11 for Everything Everywhere All At Once. Its upcoming slate includes a big-budget adaptation of Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Sympathizer, with Robert Downey Jr in the lead, a thriller called Sunny with Rashida Jones and Hidetoshi Nishijima, among others.