A24 is an American film studio founded in 2012 by Daniel Katz, David Fenkel, and John Hodges. Their first film was the 2013 comedy film A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III, directed by Roman Coppola, which was a box office bomb, earning $210,000 against a budget of $12 million.

Despite this, they would release multiple films each year.

Their best-known early film is the comedy-horror Life After Beth in 2014, directed by the late Jeff Baena. Which also underperformed at the box office but gained cult status. It was followed by the infamous body horror film Tusk by Kevin Smith.

The next year, they released one of their first majorly successful films, Ex-Machina. Which earned $37 million against a budget of $15 million.

The first I heard of them getting attention as a studio was with the 2016 horror film The Witch, directed by Robert Eggers. Since then, they keep releasing films that have surreal and horror stories.

That’s what makes them unique.

They are first and foremost an independent studio, rightfully earning the tag “indie.” What is so special about that is it gives filmmakers more creative freedom with their films than they would have under the “Hollywood” format. This is amazing for directors and writers to be flexible with their work.

You might think having a lower budget than most blockbusters might harm their films, but that is not the case. Not every successful film needs to have hundreds of millions of dollars in a budget and use SFC and CGI to make it great. A24 films average a budget of $15-20 million per film, and they know how to use it to make the film successful. Their biggest budget film was Civil War in 2024, with $50 million, and it earned $120 million.

We need more indie studios that give their filmmakers more control over the film, which leads to its success and, on the whole, a smoother production.

It’s a great way for first-time feature-length films to find a home and for filmmakers with more non-conventional stories to find a home.