What Neon’s ‘Longlegs,’ A24’s ‘Civil War’ Demonstrate About Indie Distribution Power
The 2024 box office has had its ups and downs so far, but two leading distributors outside of the studio system continue to hit milestones.
Neon horror film “Longlegs” opened to $22 million last weekend, the best wide opening yet for the distributor after “Immaculate” in March and “Ferrari” last December did the same. A24 also achieved the same milestone three months ago with “Civil War.”
The record openings set at either distributor were largely the result of heavy marketing campaigns coming to fruition.
However, their overall strategies differ greatly.
“Longlegs” benefited heavily from outside-the-box marketing ploys, such as a ‘90s-style website dedicated to its serial killer subject matter and a dedicated hotline so callers could listen to star Nicolas Cage creepily sing “Happy Birthday” between bouts of gibberish.
That word-of-mouth momentum further helped “Longlegs” stand out as a darker option for thrill-seeking adults amid animated blockbusters “Despicable Me 4” and “Inside Out 2,” whose massive turnouts have largely escaped other films from the major studios in a year overshadowed by strike-related delays that have left gaps in the calendar.
And unlike major studios’ shaky tendency to spend hundreds of millions for the budgets of franchise fire, “Longlegs” instantly made back its cost thanks to lean expenses that came in under $10 million, including marketing — and 2024 is by far Neon’s best year at the box office to date.
“Longlegs” did overshadow A24’s recent horror outing “MaXXXine,” which hit theaters a week earlier, but that distributor is still enjoying what is shaping up to be its best year too, thanks to “Civil War.” A24’s most expensive film to date, the war thriller took advantage of a diminished spring calendar and politically tense election year by plastering images of a war-torn U.S. everywhere, driving enough filmgoers out to Imax showings for A24 to best its previous record opening in 2018 horror effort “Hereditary.”
The success of “Civil War” also made up for last year’s “Beau Is Afraid,” from “Hereditary” director Ari Aster. Budgeted at $35 million, the surrealist thriller was then the distributor’s biggest production to date, but it floundered at the box office and couldn’t crack $10 million domestically.
As much as the performance of “Beau Is Afraid” brought A24’s box office and awards victory lap for “Everything Everywhere All at Once” to a screeching halt, its acquistion of Sundance horror hit “Talk to Me” still saved the day and enabled 2023 to be another record year for the distributor when it thrived during the summer. The opening for “Longlegs” was more than twice that of “Talk to Me,” a good indication “Longlegs” will live up to the box office pun in its title.
The concluding film to a low-budget slasher trilogy, “MaXXXine” still achieved a better opening than prior films “X” and “Pearl,” joining years of modest horror successes at A24 as the distributor continues to embrace bigger budgets as part of an effort to potentially launch its own franchises.
This is especially the case for “Death Stranding,” which A24 will co-produce and distribute. An adaptation of the PlayStation Studios second-party game made by Kojima Productions, its dystopian sci-fi, horror and fantasy setting certainly won’t be cheap to make as a live-action film, given the hi-fi graphics of AAA games at that level.
HBO’s adaptation of PlayStation classic “The Last of Us” cost more than $10 million per episode, begging the question of why Sony Pictures and its PlayStation Productions label aren’t the ones adapting “Death Stranding.”
Neon, on the other hand, is playing it safer. The distributor’s biggest gamble to date was its successful bid for Michael Mann’s “Ferrari,” whose near-$100 million budget had been set up by STX Films. Neon reportedly spent at least $15 million for the Michael Mann racing biopic and another $7 million to market it, making its initially dour domestic performance concerning, but it still reached more than $40 million globally before hitting the digital market.
That doesn’t mean Neon isn’t also looking to push into the mid-budget range. Its collaboration with Waypoint Entertainment to co-finance upcoming horror flick “Cuckoo” led to an extended deal in March that will see the two entities produce more films with budgets exceeding $10 million.
Neon is also taking advantage of A24’s push into bigger projects by locking down directors previously associated with the latter distributor. In November, it continued its penchant for acquiring Cannes Palme d’Or winners by nabbing Sean Baker’s “Anora,” the first of Baker’s films to release through the distributor after A24 handled his last two.
On top of that, Neon is producing and distributing the unexpected sequel to 2014 horror hit “It Follows,” titled “They Follow,” which will be helmed by returning director David Robert Mitchell. His last film, 2018’s “Under the Silver Lake,” received a very limited theatrical run from A24 but has since become a cult hit.
At Cannes, the distributor further locked down the next film from “Longlegs” director Osgood Perkins, an adaptation of Stephen King short story “The Monkey.” In fact, the film already has a release date seven months from now — a sign Neon is dead serious about making the most of its heightened horror success and getting ahead of the competition.
