by Everything Everywhere Everything at Once, the crazy multiverse comedy-drama starring Michelle Yeoh, has become film production company A24’s first film to gross $100 million globally.
This is quite a feat: A24 has been behind some hugely successful films, including 2016’s Moonlight, Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird and Asif Kapadia’s 2015 documentary Amy. But if the studio first got name recognition, then there are accolades, now the money has finally arrived.
Everything Everywhere All at Once has grossed more than A24’s previous global top earners Hereditary ($80 million), Lady Bird ($78 million), Moonlight ($65 million) and Uncut Gems ($50 million).
The film follows the story of a woman who discovers that she needs to connect to parallel universe versions of herself in order to fight a being that threatens to destroy the multiverse. It’s made waves for being unpredictable, wacky and brilliantly fun, bringing the independent film studio to an even wider audience.
Since its launch in 2012, A24 has gone from strength to strength. Founded by film industry stalwarts Daniel Katz, David Fenkel and John Hodges, the studio began by distributing the films A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III and then Spring Breakers.
Over the years, it has continued to produce films that have done well at the Academy Awards, including Room, Moonlight, Ex Machina and Minari, and has worked with some of indie Hollywood’s biggest names, including Sofia Coppola (who made On The Rocks and The Bling Ring with the studio), Gaspar Noé’, James Franco, Andrea Arnold (whose film American Honey won the Jury Prize at Cannes in 2016) and Joel Coen (with his 2021 black-and-white version of Macbeth starring Denzel Washington). A24 is also the studio behind HBO’s popular teen drama series, Euphoria.
For the first time, A24 will show three films this year at the Venice Film Festival: Ti West’s pearl, Darren Aronofsky’s The Whale and Joanna Hogg’s The Eternal Daughter.
If you’re new to A24, you’re in for a treat. The studio has a full slate of brilliant films to watch – so many in fact that it’s a truly difficult task to narrow down a selection. Still, here’s our roundup of the best A24 movies so far, although it almost certainly misses out on some bobby dazzlers…
1. Uncut Gems – Josh Safdie and Benny Safdie
If you were on the internet earlier this year, you’re unlikely to have missed the viral audio clip of Julia Fox saying ‘Uncut Gems’. However, you may have missed the source of this infamous phrase: a 2019 crime film starring Adam Sandler, Julia Fox and Idina Menzel of the Safdie brothers. Set in New York, the game stars Sandler as a jeweler who makes a series of high-stakes bets centered around a valuable black opal. It’s fast, loud, brash and extremely, extremely tense. Forget the popcorn while you watch, invest in a stress ball instead.
2. The Lighthouse – Robert Eggers
American director Robert Eggers, who recently made The Northman, first found success with folk horror The Witch and followed it with psychological thriller The Lighthouse with A24. Set in the 19th century, Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson star as two lighthouse keepers stranded in a small New England outpost by a particularly violent storm. They go a little crazy and it’s a terrifying watch with Citizen Kane and Hitchcock Psycho undertones.
3. Farewell – Lulu Wang
Awkwafina won an Oscar for her role in this tender comedy-drama about a Chinese-American family who decide not to tell their grandmother that she’s been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer and doesn’t have long to live, and instead plans a family reunion . The film was also nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. It is both funny and deeply moving.
3. The souvenir – Joanna Hogg
This highly acclaimed 2019 film from British director Joanna Hogg is a semi-autobiographical retelling of her film school experience. It stars Tilda Swinton, the actor’s daughter Honor, Tom Burke and Richard Ayoade. The story is beautifully told, while the film is also an aesthetic treat.
4. The Children’s Act – Richard Eyre
Starring Emma Thompson and Stanley Tucci, 2017’s The Children Act feels like something of a departure for A24. Based on the 2014 novel of the same name by Ian McEwan, who also wrote the screenplay, it tells the story of 17-year-old Adam Henry who has leukemia.
His doctors want to give him a blood transfusion that will help him fight the disease, but Adam and his parents are Jehovah’s Witnesses and therefore believe that receiving a blood transfusion is unbiblical. Thompson is a Supreme Court judge, who must solve the dramatic case.
5. Hereditary – Ari Aster
This 2018 film from Midsommar director Ari Aster is one of A24’s biggest grossers, and it’s easy to see why. Using the idea of inherited trauma, the film, starring Toni Collette and Gabriel Byrne, is genuinely creepy, cleverly playing with classic horror tropes. After a family’s secretive grandmother dies, they are haunted by a dark presence. Absolutely terrifying.
6. Menashe – Joshua Z Weinstein
This 2017 film tells the story of a single father, Menashe, who wants to spend more time with his son. In the New York Hasidic community he comes from, however, a rabbi has ruled that he must remarry before his son can return to live with him. His first marriage was unhappy, so he is reluctant.
Director Joshua Z Weinstein was praised for allowing audiences to glimpse this often closed community through a very human story with universal themes.
7. The Killing of a Sacred Deer – Yorgos Lanthimos
This 2017 film from The Lobster and The Favorite director Yorgos Lanthimos stars Colin Farrell and Nicole Kidman and tells the story of a surgeon who secretly befriends a teenage boy before scary and terrible things start happening to his family.
The film is supposed to be inspired by Euripides’ play Iphigenia in Aulis, although the disturbing white hospital walls and the muffled conversations between the characters evoke as much terror as tragedy.
8. Lady Bird – Greta Gerwig
A coming-of-age drama from Little Women director Greta Gerwig, Lady Bird centers on the relationship between a teenage girl (Saoirse Ronan) and her mother (Laurie Metcalf). The film received five Oscar nominations, won two Golden Globe awards and was named by Time as one of the best films of the year.
9. Good Time – Josh Safdie and Benny Safdie
The Safdie brothers deserve two films listed in this collection – their 2017 crime thriller Good Time is just as full-throttle as Uncut Gems, backed by an incredible soundtrack. Robert Pattinson and Benny Safdie play two brothers who rob a bank. Safdie’s character Nick has a mental disability and is caught up in his brother’s antics, with horrific results.
The film received some criticism for Nick’s portrayal, with The New York Times calling it “slack-jawed” – but many praised the high-octane action including Vulture, which said it was “the kind of suspense that sticks”.
10. Remember – Atom Egoyan
Remember is a drama-thriller starring Christopher Plummer as a Holocaust survivor with dementia who decides to kill a Nazi war criminal. It is a devastating work that plays on themes of regret, revenge, hatred and forgiveness and growing old. Director Atom Egoyan was awarded the 2015 Vittorio Veneto Film Festival Award in Venice for the film.
11. Moonlight – Barry Jenkins
We all remember the painful moment when La La Land was read out at the 2016 Oscars as the winner of Best Picture, when Moonlight had actually won. Well, they got there in the end, and a good thing too.
Starring Mahershala Ali, Naomie Harris, Trevante Rhodes and André Holland, the film coming of age follows three stages of a man’s life as he struggles with his sexual identity. The film earned Ali Best Supporting Actor at the Academy Awards and Best Adapted Screenplay for Barry Jenkins and Tarell Alvin McCraney as well. It also became one of A24’s biggest revenues.
12. Amy – Asif Kapadia
Another smash hit, Asif Kapadia’s 2015 documentary Amy, about Amy Winehouse, won an Oscar for Best Documentary Feature, won Best Music Film at the Grammy Awards and won Best Documentary at the British Academy Film Awards. An absolute must for Amy fans as it tracks the singer’s life as she rises to fame and then follows her battle with addiction.
The film was seen as painting Winehouse’s father, Mitch, in a negative light, and the family largely rejected it. “The film represents me in a not very good way. There’s no balance, there’s nothing about the foundation,” Mitch said on ITV’s This Morning in 2015.
