Rarely has a non-English language film been nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture until Bong Joon-ho’s. parasite It won the first prize in 2020. This year, two are competing in the first category – Brazil Secret agent And Norway Emotional value. The trio – along with last year’s surprise Best Picture winner, the English-language drama Anura -We share a common bond: Neon, the independent distribution company run by Tom Quinn, whose impeccable taste and maverick style have led him to box office success and the world’s most prestigious award shows.
Neon heads into the 98th Academy Awards on Sunday, March 25, with 18 nominations, the second most of any distributor behind Warner Bros.’ 30 nominations. Sinnersdirected by Ryan Coogler and Paul Thomas Anderson Battle after battle. (Warners’ count also includes Zach Krieger’s count Weapons.)
The fact that a major Hollywood studio has two films competing for Best Picture is a rare feat in the modern era, and a testament to Motion Picture Group co-presidents Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdi, who have tried to push the envelope in building a more diverse slate (they also recently hired several top Neon executives). However, no one is sure what the landscape will look like once David Ellison’s Paramount-Skydance closes its deal to buy Warners. He says he will keep the two studios separate, but what that means in terms of executive ranks remains unclear.
Queen’s motto when releasing Neon in 2017 was to target younger moviegoers who would be more open-minded when it came to foreign-language films, and high-profile genre titles (look no further). parasitewhich grossed $262 million at the global box office), documentaries and thriller dramas, such as I’m Tonyaone of the company’s first successes.
His sharp antics also led to Neon acquiring the domestic distribution rights to the last six films in a row that won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. It includes ParagraphLocation and AnoraIn addition to the Oscar nominees for Best Picture Triangle of sadness (2022) and Anatomy of a fall (2023).
Unlike major studios, independent labels have used awards season as a marketing tool to increase box office revenue. However, it has become difficult to keep a film in theaters long enough to take advantage of such a bump as platform releases decline. Although that’s exactly what Elissa Federoff, head of Neon Distribution, did with both Emotional value and Secret agentAnd it worked.
“The other thing we’ve found with all of our award-nominated films is that once they’re on Premium VOD, it doesn’t hinder theatrical release at all,” says Federoff. “We showcased four foreign language titles that generated $20 million at the box office over three months, which is a really impressive number.”
Secret agentFor example, it received the biggest post-nomination boost of any film competing this year for Best Picture (it was nominated in three other categories, including Best Actor for Wagner Moura). Opening for the first time in select theaters over Thanksgiving, the film had grossed $2.6 million at the time of its Academy Award nomination on January 22. Over the weekend of March 6-8, it crossed the $4 million mark on its way to $4.3 million through March 11, meaning 37 percent of its earnings came in the post-nomination lane, according to Comscore.
Focus features Hamnet It is the only other Best Picture nominee that comes close to matching that outsized success domestically, or 36 percent. Hamnet The film is expected to jump to $100 million globally at the Academy Awards on Sunday, with more than $73 million coming from the international box office.
“The most important currency for Neon is not necessarily the box office results of their films, which have been impressive, but rather how their films punch above their weight in terms of critical acclaim, awards, and most importantly the reputation that Neon has built with both filmmakers and audiences by methodically and systematically delivering an amazing array of highly eclectic films across the genre spectrum over the years,” says Paul Dergarabedian, senior box office analyst at Comscore.
Emotional valuewhich received nine nominations, opened in early November in only a handful of cinemas. By Thanksgiving, the film was showing in nearly 300 theaters, but Federoff began holding back to make sure the film could be shown in a few theaters throughout the crowded Christmas corridor. By the time of the Oscar nominations, its earnings were hovering around $4.2 million. It crossed the $5 million mark over the weekend of February 20-22, which means a 17 percent increase after the nomination.
When the nominations were announced, one of the films that generated the most outrage over its exclusion from the Best Picture race, let alone any category, was the fifth foreign-language entry from Neon, Park Chan-wook’s dark thriller. There is no other choice.
Neon’s response was provocative, to say the least. In a riff on the traditional “For Taking Care of You” billboards that fill Los Angeles during the Oscar and Emmy seasons, Neon created a billboard for There is no other choice Which began with the banner line “Disdain Above the Rest.” In another line, some letters from the word “for” were crossed out to become “in your view.”
Maybe the disdain was worth it. There is no other choice It has grossed a whopping $10 million since then, and is one of the top foreign language films at the US box office in recent times, outside of animated or indie franchises. It debuted its run during the year-end holidays in early January before leaving theaters in late February after being made available at home on premium VOD.
Just as the Paramount-Warner Bros. merger reflects Key Challenges Facing Legacy Studio Business The independent film industry is also grappling with keeping investors happy and the books balanced. Neither Quinn nor Neon representatives have yet commented on reports that it has secured a new lead investor, Company M, but Neon is releasing the upcoming Company M movie Christophers On April 10th.
Neon may not pull off another surprise Best Picture win like it did a year ago Anorabut there’s still plenty to celebrate, between the sheer number of Oscar nominations or the fact that four of the five films in contention for Best International Feature were distributed in the US by Neon; Emotional value, Secret agent, It was just an accident and Sirat. And the next Boots Riley movie I love the boosters It received rave reviews when it opened SXSW on March 12 (Neon is handling the pic, which had an early Rotten Tomatoes score of 19 reviews of 100 percent).
There’s also Fedorov and Neon’s successful take on Baz Luhrmann Epic: Elvis Presley in Concert. The pic recently opened with $3.25 million, the biggest launch ever for an IMAX-exclusive music release before expanding nationwide with a 10-day domestic total of $9.4 million. It’s also the rare neon title that skewed towards people over 50.
Neon films’ ever-expanding scope and track record are noteworthy and “make them a force to be reckoned with in the highly competitive ecosystem of the independent film world,” says Dergarabedian.
