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Production company A24 was founded in 2012, and over the last ten years it has produced many intriguing, stylish movies across a range of genres. These include terrific sci-fis like Under the Skin and Denis Villeneuve‘s Enemy; dramas like Locke, Eighth Grade, and 20th Century Women; and wacky genre hybrids Swiss Army Man and A Ghost Story. They also collaborated with HBO to produce Euphoria.
As a result, A24 has acquired a growing fan base, meaning bigger budgets and bigger stars. 2023 looks like it’ll be another big year for the company. It will see the release of several highly anticipated projects, including Kelly Reichardt‘s Showing Up and When You Finish Saving the World, the directorial debut from Jesse Eisenberg.
‘Spring Breakers’ (2013)
Box Office: $32m
Spring Breakerswas A24’s first real hit. It stars Selena Gomez, Vanessa Hudgens, and Ashley Benson as a group of college friends who get mixed up with a drug dealer (James Franco) and soon find themselves entangled in a world of crime and violence. It’s very tongue-in-cheek though, with a madcap sense of humor.
Director Harmony Korine says he carefully selected the cast members to emphasize the movie’s themes. “There’s obviously something very exciting about working with these girls who are, in some ways, in real life, representative of that culture and that pop mythology; and also people who the public can identify as personalities that are complete contrasts to what they’re portraying in the film,” Korine has said. “I love that that part is a conceptual shock on top of the actual film.”
‘Room’ (2015)
Box Office: $35m
Room tells the story of Joy (Brie Larson), a young woman who is kidnaped and held captive for seven years. She is kept in a shed with her five-year-old son Jack (Jacob Tremblay). Despite the horrific situation, Joy tries to care for Jack and remain hopeful, even as the odds of them escaping seem more and more remote.
“The most conventional romantic trope of all is that you put lovers under extreme pressure, where they have to make decisions that illuminate aspects of that bond,” director Lenny Abrahamsonexplains. “Room does the same, but with the parent-child relationship.”
‘Ex Machina’ (2014)
Box Office: $36.8m
Ex Machina was the directorial debut by 28 Days Later screenwriter Alex Garland. It’s a sophisticated thriller about an inventor (Oscar Isaac), his A.I. robot (Alicia Vikander), and a programmer (Domhnall Gleeson) with no idea what he’s getting himself into. It boasts great acting, a story full of twists, and plenty of thoughtful commentary about artificial intelligence.
“I just got very interested in the area of artificial intelligence and, in particular, how it relates to human consciousness because it’s about what we value about each other,” Garland says. “I could see that there was a lot of anxiety floating around about A.I.s. And I wanted to address it partly because I thought it was misplaced.”
‘The Witch’ (2015)
Box Office: $40m
The Witch was the first feature for both director Robert Eggers and star Anya Taylor-Joy. They hit the ground running, resulting in one of the most immersive and thoughtful horrors of the last decade. The film takes place in a New England settlement in the 1600s, where dark events begin to plague a family. Notably, The Witch eschews jump scares for slow-burning tension and allegory.
“It’s about the family,” Eggers has said. “One of the things I like about classic fairy tales is the same thing I like about myths: they explore complex family dynamics. The family drama is the most interesting drama; that’s why Hamlet and King Learare generally the most lauded Shakespeare plays.”
‘Midsommar’ (2019)
Box Office: $47.9m
After the success of Hereditary, director Ari Aster teamed up with Florence Pugh for this psychological slasher about a group of friends who attend a Swedish midsummer festival. It turns out the locals belong to a cult that engages in human sacrifice.
Midsommar is unusual for a horror in that it takes place almost entirely in bright daylight. “This film is adjacent to horror; I wouldn’t call it a horror film. I think of it as a fairy tale with horror elements,” Aster explains. “It’s folk horror, but it’s being given to you with the trajectory of a high-school comedy.”
‘Uncut Gems’ (2019)
Box Office: $50m
Few films are as wild and frenetic as this crime thriller directed by the Safdie brothers. It centers on Howard (Adam Sandler), a jeweler with a gambling addiction who has to retrieve a gem to pay his debt to a crew of gangsters. Sandler delivers his darkest and most complex performance since Punch-Drunk Love.
“The idea is that [Howard is] rough on the outside, but if you scratched below the surface, you see the beauty, and you see these things that you didn’t quite know were there at first glance,” Benny Safdie has said. “You need to understand him to really love and know who he is.”
‘Moonlight’ (2016)
Box Office: $65m
Moonlight is probably A24’s most moving film. It tells the story of Chiron, a gay young man from Liberty City, Miami. Three different actors play Chiron; first as a boy, then as a teenager and finally an adult. It represented a major step forward for director Barry Jenkins and went on to win the Oscar for Best Picture.
“When I first read Tarell [Alvin McCraney]’s play, I told him it was like he took a memory of my memories and placed them into this fever dream,” Jenkins has said. “I’m glad visually, that’s what the translation became. I’ve always tried to find a way to use the aesthetics of filmmaking to tap into the subconscious. That’s the power of cinema.”
‘Lady Bird’ (2017)
Box Office: $78.9m
After proving herself as an actress in films like Frances Ha and 20th Century Women, Greta Gerwig stepped behind the camera for this coming-of-age story about a teenage girl (Sairose Ronan) and her strained relationship with her mother (Laurie Metcalf).
“I wanted to explore the fact that I think when you’re a teenager, you’re trying to figure out who you are through the refraction of other people,” Gerwig says. “It’s reaching for a definition of oneself through relationships and sometimes rejecting the ones that are close to you because you are sure that someone else is better; someone would reflect a better self to you.”
‘Hereditary’ (2018)
Box Office: $80m
Ari Aster’s next project for A24 is the upcoming comedy horror Disappointment Blvd starring Joaquin Phoenix. Based on the strength of his first two films, it’s no surprise that it’s one of the most anticipated movies of 2023. It looks set to be another gem, but it’s unlikely to top Hereditary, his dark, moving portrait of a family in crisis.
“I knew that I really wanted to make a film about the corrosive effects of trauma on a family unit,” Aster says. “I knew that I wanted to make a film that had sort of an ouroboros quality about a family that’s basically eating itself in its grief. It’s a story that I certainly had in me.”
‘Everything Everywhere All At Once’ (2022)
Box Office: $99.9m
Everything Everywhere All At Once was, hands down, the biggest breakout hit of 2022. It seemingly came out of nowhere to become a critical and commercial sensation. It’s a surreal, wacky adventure across multiple dimensions that succeeds thanks to the terrific performances from lead Michelle Yeoh and villain Jamie Lee Curtis.
The directors, Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, have said that the movie is about “trying to exist and live in the chaos of modern life.” “That was the thing that we were trying to capture,” Kwan explains. “There’s no bad guy in the movie except for chaos itself – existence, so we could touch all those things: intergenerational [issues], sexuality, queer identity, Asian American identity, taxes!”
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