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“Elden Ring,” one of the most popular video games of all time, takes place in a fantasy realm called the Lands Between — a space between life and death where humans battle gods and monsters for power.
A24 has just wrapped
production on the movie adaptation, representing the company’s biggest swing to date. The action epic, starring Kit Connor and directed by Alex Garland, carries an enormous $200 million price tag. The film’s otherworldly setting is fitting, as the art-house giant currently occupies a land between: no longer a scrappy indie studio challenging the establishment, not yet a merged or acquired corporate monolith scaling up to the major studio table.
But this year will go down as A24’s most profitable ever thanks to the runaway success of Gen Z horror breakout “Backrooms” and Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim’s lightning rod Elizabeth Holmes documentary “You Can See Everything.” Those titles and others have boosted A24 above $500 million at the domestic box office for the first time.
A24 may also eke out bragging rights as the most nominated studio at the Oscars, just as its fledgling TV division has started producing serious hits (following up HBO’s “Euphoria” with Peacock’s “Crystal Lake,” HBO’s “Neighbors” and Apple TV’s “Margot’s Got Money Troubles”). The traction that A24 is enjoying in this moment of massive disruption and consolidation across the industry is a true flex from one of entertainment’s most bulletproof brands. But all of this momentum raises the question: What does A24 want to be?
“If they’re ever going to monetize, this is the time to do it,” one high-flying mogul says of A24. Speculation about the studio’s M&A potential has been floating around town since its 2013 inception. Led by founders David Fenkel and Daniel Katz, A24 has over the years flirted with buyers like Apple and Sony. But no deal has materialized because Fenkel and Katz have ruthlessly protected A24’s cool factor (the abstract secret sauce that’s trained younger generations to reclaim the moviegoing experience and make edgy auteurs their idols). They’ve turned down a host of recent offers for equity investments and held creative control as tightly as first-person gamers treasure the mythical forces of “Elden Ring.”
Inside A24, the reigning logic for the past several years has been “grow from within,” as underscored by the 2021 hire of NBA chief financial officer J.B. Lockhart to help the company scale at a cautious pace. Insiders also credit chief operating officer Matt Bires (an architect of A24’s Cherry Lane Theater acquisition), global TV head Ravi Nandan (the Fielder whisperer) and the all-important chief marketer Graham Retzlik with the steady growth. But make no mistake, the source says, “Fenkel and Katz are absolutely interested in getting rich.”
A24’s last fundraise came in mid-2024, courtesy of Josh Kushner’s Thrive Capital, and valued the company at $3.5 billion. It’s a modest sum compared with the eye-popping $111 billion check that Skydance wrote to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery, but nevertheless a number that three sources at rival companies find out of line with market realities.
“They’ve got a great brand, but in an acquisition scenario, we’ve seen that brands don’t really survive. Look at what Disney did to FX and 20th Century Fox,” says another top executive. “Their earnings look good, especially this year, but the pressure is on to grow into the valuation they chased.”
To that end, the studio has been experimenting with bigger price tags and splashier IP, like a massive recent deal for the film and TV rights to “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.” However, the studio’s efforts to scale beyond its low-budget roots have been mixed. Dice rolls last year — like Ari Aster’s “Eddington” and Dwayne Johnson’s “The Smashing Machine,” each of which cost $50 million — were rejected at the box office.
Despite the rough 2025 returns, A24 rebounded this year in a big way. “You Can See Everything” (a staggering $64 million to date) and “The Drama,” an offbeat relationship comedy starring Zendaya and Robert Pattinson ($134 million globally), became breakout hits in genres that don’t always resonate on the big screen. That’s to say nothing of “Backrooms,” a wildly profitable sensation that became the studio’s highest grossing film ever with $400 million globally against a $10 million budget. Over the summer, A24 managed to beat Warner Bros. and Paramount in terms of market share, one of the rare moments an indie has outgrossed the major studios during what’s usually the busiest time for moviegoing. All the riches on “Backrooms” and “You Can See Everything” will mop up the red ink from misses such as Glen Powell’s action comedy “How to Make a Killing” ($21 million against a $15 million budget), Hugh Jackman’s revisionist “The Death of Robin Hood” ($9.8 million against a $20 million budget) and Chris Rock’s dramedy “Misty Green” ($160,000 against a $5 million budget).
Rivals gripe that A24 is savvy about burying its failures. That’s partially because the company doesn’t handle the overseas rollout of its films, instead selling the foreign rights to regional distributors. That helps the studio recoup losses for underperforming movies. Yet it also means A24 doesn’t get to enjoy the outsize riches when a title like “Backrooms” earns more than $200 million internationally.
According to a recent Wall Street Journal story, Fenkel and Katz have been flying around the globe for the past year to look for “potential partners” to help A24 establish ports in foreign markets. The reported plan is finding local language teams with similar sensibilities as the U.S. outfit. Placing that kind of creative trust in satellite offices could be a risky proposition, though less expensive than building out an international distribution engine. The founders don’t seem to mind racking up sky miles — A24 was, perhaps preciously, named after the highway that connects Rome to the quaint Italian mountain town of Teroma.
As A24 scales up with bigger budgets, a challenge will be connecting with audiences beyond the coasts. Part of the charm to cinephiles and allure for auteurs is that the studio isn’t trying to make movies for everyone. Some of the company’s buzziest films were wildly polarizing. Consider the CinemaScore for favorites like favorites like “Hereditary” (D+), Adam Sandler’s “Uncut Gems” (C+) or “Backrooms” (B-). None of those movies cost above $20 million to produce, so they didn’t need to resonate with the masses. However, “Elden Ring” and next year’s $35 million slasher “Slayground” can’t afford to alienate most of the country.
“When you get into these price tags, you have to talk four quadrants. A24 didn’t build their brand on four-quadrant films. They chased two quadrants very hard,” says Travis Knox, associate professor of producing at Chapman University. “At $100 million-plus budgets, you can’t ignore Oklahoma and Indiana.”
Beyond the movies, TV shows and viral merchandise, A24 has physical assets in New York’s Cherry Lane Theatre and a controversial $75 million investment from Google DeepMind to develop AI tools for filmmakers. Those are value adds for a big-ticket sale, though Knox points to an important caveat for any deal. The single greatest asset that A24 has is the power of its brand to bring younger audiences to theaters and TV platforms without the stench of corporate greed.
“If they were purchased by, say, Amazon … it would automatically alienate the audience,” says Knox.
