What Neon’s “Longlegs” and A24’s “Civil War” prove about the power of indie music

The 2024 box office receipts have had their ups and downs so far, but two leading non-studio distributors continue to hit box office milestones.

Neon horror film “Longlegs” scored $22 million last weekend, making it the best distributor opening yet, after “Immaculate” did the same in March and “Ferrari” did the same last December. A24 reached the same milestone three months ago with “Civil War.”

The record openings at both dealerships were largely the result of extensive marketing campaigns that bore fruit.

However, their overall strategies differ considerably.

“Longlegs” benefited greatly from unconventional marketing ploys, such as a ’90s-style website devoted exclusively to serial killers and its own hotline where callers could hear star Nicolas Cage sing “Happy Birthday” in an eerie manner between bouts of gibberish.

That word of mouth also helped Longlegs stand out as a gritty alternative for thrill-seeking adults alongside animated blockbusters Despicable Me 4 and Inside Out 2, which struggled to keep up with other major studio films with such high ratings in a year marred by strike-related delays and gaps in the calendar.

And unlike the questionable tendency of major studios to spend hundreds of millions on new franchise budgets, Longlegs has immediately recouped its costs thanks to low spending of under $10 million, including marketing – 2024 is by far Neon’s best box office year ever.

While “Longlegs” overshadowed A24’s latest horror film, “MaXXXine,” which opened a week earlier, the distributor is still enjoying its best year yet thanks to “Civil War.” The war thriller, A24’s most expensive film to date, took advantage of the limited spring calendar and politically fraught election year to spread images of a war-torn U.S. everywhere, drawing enough moviegoers to IMAX theaters to surpass its previous record opening for 2018’s horror film “Hereditary.”

The success of “Civil War” also offset last year’s film “Beau Is Afraid” from “Hereditary” director Ari Aster. With a budget of $35 million, the surrealist thriller was the distributor’s biggest production to date, but it flopped at the box office and didn’t even reach the $10 million mark domestically.

As much as the release of “Beau Is Afraid” ended A24’s blockbuster and triumphant run of “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” the acquisition of the Sundance horror hit “Talk to Me” saved the day and gave the distributor another record-breaking year of thriving in the summer. “Longlegs” grossed more than double that of “Talk to Me,” a good sign that “Longlegs” lives up to the blockbuster in its title.

“MaXXXine,” the final film in a low-budget slasher trilogy, nonetheless had a better start than its predecessors “X” and “Pearl,” adding to years of modest horror successes at A24 as the distributor continues to allocate larger budgets as part of its efforts to potentially launch its own franchises.

This is especially true of Death Stranding, which A24 will co-produce and distribute. An adaptation of PlayStation Studios’ second-party game by Kojima Productions, its dystopian sci-fi, horror and fantasy setting as a live-action film certainly won’t come cheap considering the hi-fi graphics of AAA games at this level.

HBO’s adaptation of the PlayStation classic “The Last of Us” cost more than $10 million per episode, which raises the question why Sony Pictures and its PlayStation Productions label didn’t adapt “Death Stranding.”

Neon, on the other hand, is playing it safe. The distributor’s biggest gamble to date was its successful bid for Michael Mann’s Ferrari, whose nearly $100 million budget was put together by STX Films. Neon reportedly spent at least $15 million on the Michael Mann racing biopic and another $7 million on marketing, making its initial lackluster domestic success worrying, but it still grossed over $40 million worldwide before hitting the digital market.

But that doesn’t mean Neon doesn’t want to move into the mid-budget space. Its collaboration with Waypoint Entertainment to co-finance the upcoming horror film “Cuckoo” led to an expanded deal in March that allows the two companies to produce more films with budgets above $10 million.

Neon is also capitalizing on A24’s foray into bigger projects by signing directors previously associated with the latter distributor. In November, it continued its penchant for enlisting Cannes Palme d’Or winners by securing Sean Baker’s “Anora,” the first of Baker’s films to be released through the distributor after A24 handled his last two films.

Additionally, Neon is producing and distributing the unexpected sequel to the 2014 horror hit “It Follows,” titled “They Follow,” which will be directed by returning director David Robert Mitchell. His last film, 2018’s “Under the Silver Lake,” had a very limited theatrical run at A24 but has since become a cult hit.

At Cannes, the distributor also secured the next film from “Longlegs” director Osgood Perkins, an adaptation of Stephen King’s short story “The Monkey.” In fact, the film is set to hit theaters in just seven months – a sign that Neon is deadly serious about making the most of its increased horror success and staying one step ahead of the competition.