Call A24’s 2025 a 1998 Dropkick Murphys album, because this is a “do or die” year for the studio. Granted, it’s not like a string of 2025 flops will bring the house that Everything Everywhere All at Once crumbling down in a fortnight. However, this is a pivotal year for the studio in many respects. Chiefly, this is the year where A24 is releasing more titles immediately into wide release (which means 600+ North American theaters) than ever before. Its commitment to pricey projects like Marty Supreme and The Smashing Machine has also never been greater.
A24 is not angling to become the next Paramount Vantage or Focus Features. A24 wants to become Lionsgate circa. 2010-2013, hence why the studio is backing film adaptations of beloved video game brands Death Stranding and Elden Ring. As the studio expands its horizons, three titles from the last two years of A24 exploits have emerged as some of its most important recent hits. This trio of titles, The Iron Claw, Babygirl, and Materialists, practically herald what A24’s future could look like.
Expanding the A24 Brand Image
A24 has now become shorthand for “kooky indie horror movies” or “offbeat smaller films.” That’s already weird since, rather than being a producer-driven outfit like golden age MGM or Marvel Studios, A24 has spent most of its existence as a distributor, not financier or cultivator, of movies. It’s also strange because thinking A24 is only Hereditary is reductive of the studio’s history. Nobody remembers titles like Barely Lethal, Laggies, and The Lovers, but they’re very much part of the A24 library.
Heck, A24’s first major horror movie (excepting 2014’s Tusk) didn’t come until three years into its existence with The VVitch. Still, that project inspired the studio to commit to a slew of other horror films (including Hereditary and Talk to Me) that, accurately or not, have given A24 a reputation as an oddball horror empire first and foremost. This label is happily embracing that moniker with upcoming major horror releases like The Backrooms, Onslaught, and Altar. However, it’s not possible to become a mini-major studio just leaning on horror titles. Thus, A24’s been co-financing and releasing a greater array of star-studded motion pictures…like its three most important releases over the last 24 months.
The Movies Reshaping A24’s Public Reputation
The first of those titles is The Iron Claw, a heartbreaking chronicle of the Von Erich wrestling family. Unlike most A24 wide releases, The Iron Claw was firmly set in the rural American south and involved an ensemble cast of recognizable young faces, including Zac Efron. It also qualified as a biopic. These kinds of films give studio executives cozy pre-existing material (like a famous person) to lean back on while affording filmmakers and actors a more intimate scope than a superhero/YA-novel adaptation.
In the past, A24 happily embraced completely original productions like Uncut Gems and Lady Bird. The Iron Claw, meanwhile, showed the indie label embracing biopics, a form the studio is continuing to lean on with upcoming projects like The Smashing Machine or planned movies about Ronnie Spector and Anthony Bourdain. One year after The Iron Claw’s leggy Christmas 2023 theatrical run, another crucial modern A24 movie sensually slank into theaters: Babygirl. This Nicole Kidman/Harris Dickinson two-hander also proved a tidy moneymaker and further chiseled away at mainstream perceptions of what movies the A24 logo could precede.
Besides boosting streams of a certain George Michael tune tenfold, Babygirl was critical to further extending what general audiences thought A24 could release. This label could properly market and release an erotic thriller, a genre largely ignored by theatrical movie studios. A similar phenomenon was behind Materialists, the June 2025 Celine Song directorial effort that brought the romantic drama back to the big screen after a long absence.
With ads and posters evoking Broadcast News rather than Talk to Me, Materialists saw the A24 marketing team further ballooning their areas of expertise. Trailers for this Dakota Johnson star vehicle skewered those “priceless” 2000s Mastercard commercials rather than leaning on the editing and sound design of the Hereditary trailers. After all these promotional strategies, Materialists made a nice chunk of change that (as of this writing) has exceeded $35 million domestically. That makes this the eighth A24 movie to exceed $35+ million in North America.
Among those eight is The Iron Claw, while Babygirl is just behind these titles as the studio’s ninth biggest feature in North America (with $28.17 million). These three movies, released over 18 months, now comprise a third of A24’s nine biggest films ever. This accomplishment is amplified in importance by another common trait across these three titles: their release dates. Claw and Babygirl were Christmastime films. Materialists dropped in the middle of June.
Early A24 wide releases like The VVitch or Free Fire opened in off months of the year. 2017’s The Disaster Artist went wide in a post-Thanksgiving slot just before the holiday season rush. Meanwhile, this trio of A24 titles went toe-to-toe with a deluge of bigger major studio releases and still turned a profit. It’s a sign of this label’s increasing powers as a distributor as well as how A24’s plans to expand their slate is working. If all goes well, the outfit can avoid Disney’s current problems.
A24 Doesn’t Want Disney’s Current Issues
It may sound staggeringly bizarre to compare the distributor of Close and Lamb with the outfit that’s preparing to launch a Bluey movie in 2027. However, Disney’s 2020s exploits and erratic box office track record have shown the dangers of adhering to only a certain style of movie. The Mouse House experienced major flops like The BFG and The Lone Ranger in the 2010s. However, this decade also saw the studio excelling with Marvel, Disney Animation, live-action remakes, Pixar, and Lucasfilm titles. As long as people never lost their appetite for these productions, Disney would be rolling in money.
Now, all four labels are in trouble, particularly Pixar and Marvel. Hits like Lilo & Stitch and Deadpool & Wolverine are still possible for the studio, but it’s also clear that its primary cinematic output is out of step with the public. Now that these labels are failing, Disney has nothing to fall back on. Similarly, A24 could just ride people’s idea that “A24=kooky indie horror” until the wheels fall off. Instead, this label has wisely opted to further embrace an eclectic array of wide release titles to ensure A24 can succeed with anything.
Disney can only thrive now when playing on 2000s/90s nostalgia. A24, meanwhile, is proving it can make a pretty penny on titles ranging from The Iron Claw to Babygirl to Materialists. As the studio revs up even more expensive titles like Marty Supreme or an Elden Ring movie, A24’s commitment to diversifying its film slate and refining its marketing operation will be critical.
So many indie studios (hello, Relativity Media and DreamWorks SKG!) go under after trying to get too big. Perhaps the same fate will befall A24 once its budgets get out of control. For now, though, The Iron Claw, Babygirl, and Materialists are essential hits for this distributor, “The Chosen Few’ as Dropkick Murphys might put it. These three titles suggest that anything can now exist (and make bank) under this cinematic umbrella.
