Commerce Street in the West Village is one of only two L-shaped streets in Manhattan and is by far the most picturesque. The adjacent brick houses that make up its corner were built in 1844 as the home of an Irish dry goods merchant named Alexander Turney Stuart, who invented the department store concept. Stuart was a savvy marketer, and came up with the idea of placing boxes of his wares on the sidewalk outside his store to create chaos in the entrance and attract crowds. And in doing so, he helped establish one of the pillars of New York’s buzz building: the sidewalk queue as an indicator and driver of fashion, from the high street fashions that dropped in the 1990s and the Cronuts of the 2000s, to whatever eye-catching food items are popping up on TikTok these days to ensnare New York’s youth — as SNL Put it in a modern graphic – “Big Stupid Line”.
It was in this corner, at the front of the line on a chilly April evening, that I began a 24-hour immersion into New York’s A24, the Manhattan-based independent film and TV studio behind such auteur-driven thrillers as Lady Bird, Everything everywhere at once, meat and trance. In the past two years, it has purchased and renovated the historic 167-seat Cherry Lane Theater on Commerce Street and opened a 45-seat restaurant inside Wild Cherry, now one of the toughest reservations in the city. Every night, famous pundits line up to try their luck at a fast-track ticket or a barstool at Wild Cherry. I was one of them.
A source at A24 told me that the idea behind the theater and restaurant was to parlay the trust the studio had built among its core fan base of young cinephiles into deeper cultural engagement, rooted in the real world — specifically in downtown Manhattan. But it’s also an exercise in brand building, an attempt to maintain its cool-kid image as it grows.
The company now finds itself at a crossroads, and in some ways a victim of its own success. Known for its flair and marketing acumen, the 13-year-old studio has developed a fan base not only for its films and shows but also for the A24 brand itself. It is largely funded by private equity firms such as Thrive Capital and Guggenheim Partners, and two years ago was valued at $3.5 billion, more than 10 times the valuation of its closest independent competitor, Neon. It’s hard to justify that sum with the kind of mid-budget arthouse films the studio has built its reputation on, which may explain why its budgets and box office grosses have ballooned in recent years as it seeks to appeal to a wider audience. But now she’s faced with the thermodynamics of trends: the cooler something is, the more popular it becomes, and the more popular it is, the less cool it seems.
Thanks to Cherry Lane and Wild Cherry, it can now lay claim to one of the most culturally vibrant corners of New York, which has become the ultimate manifestation of A24’s exciting IRL spirit as it seeks to expand into live events, music, books, merchandising and lifestyle – all without sacrificing its cognitive cachet.
I embarked on my 24-hour experiment to see if it worked. I arrived at Cherry Lane 20 minutes before the Clare Barron revival was scheduled to take place I’m getting olderStarring Alia Shawkat (Search party) and Peter Friedman (succession). Wanting a quick drink, I skipped the ticket line to Wild Cherry, where a seat at the curved bar miraculously opened up. The flight attendant warned me that there would be no break and urged me to use the bathroom first. I had just enough time to drink a dirty martini and admire the new bar’s decor before a big stupid line formed outside the restaurant’s bathroom.
Founded in 1923, Cherry Lane calls itself the birthplace of Off-Broadway. It’s where Edward Albee first staged plays, where Tony Curtis was discovered, and where a teenage Barbra Streisand worked as an illustrator. A24 bought it for just over $10 million in 2023, and reopened it in 2025 after an overhaul. For an independent company that trades so extraordinarily well, there is perhaps no more prestigious cultural award in New York.
Under the leadership of the new Program Director, Danny Wright, Ex SNL Talent booking company, Cherry Lane, presented the critically acclaimed one-man show ware and a series of FOMO-inducing events, including concerts by Florence Welch and Brandi Carlile, a surprise stand-up by Adam Sandler and a series of “Sundays With Sofia” screenings hosted by frequent A24 director Sofia Coppola.
audience for I’m getting older She looked about 30 years younger than the average Broadway audience, and noticeably more tattooed. There were many mustaches and many cocktails, which might explain why they laughed enthusiastically at parts that weren’t supposed to be funny. As presented by director Anne Kaufman, the play feels like a piece from A24’s filmography, dealing with death, sex, family and coming of age, with spikes of humor and surrealism. The audience lingered after the applause. Playwright and consummate social butterfly Jeremy O. Harris holds court in the corridor, following his new assignment in a Japanese prison and his viral moment chewing out OpenAI’s Sam Altman in… Vanity gallery Oscar party. It felt like the night had just begun.
For dinner. Wild Cherry is the brainchild of James Beard Award-winning chefs Lee Hanson and Riad Nasr, veterans of Daniel and Balthazar and the duo behind trendy French restaurants Le Veau d’Or, Le Rock and Frenchette. Several of A24’s top brass, including co-founder Daniel Katz and COO Matthew Pires, were regulars at Frenchette in Tribeca and invited Hanson and Nasr to build a new concept inside what had been Cherry Lane Theater’s black-box rehearsal space. The night I went, Hanson was whipping up thighs, fries, lobster clubs and frog legs (highly recommended) in Kiev while the bartender prepared the signature cocktail and a pot of gin, rum and cognac that you could dunk your head into.
The most literal reference to A24’s core business is a small red tub of popcorn on the table. Through its films, A24 has gained a reputation for allowing artists to be artists, and has done the same with Nasr and Hanson. “There wasn’t an A24 playbook that we necessarily had to follow, but they’re in the business of creativity, creating fun and interesting things. They let us do our job,” Hanson says.
New York Times Wild Cherry has been called “the best restaurant in town” and reviewed I’m getting older glowing. With this kind of success, A24 plans to expand its cultural footprint in the city, with more spaces and perhaps more restaurants. “Our goal has always and forever been how do we ensure that we have spaces for artists to do their best work, regardless of format, platform or space,” a studio source told me.
Right now, the closest thing to another A24 restaurant is the new Ambassadors Clubhouse, a swanky Indian restaurant imported from London that shares a building with the studio’s offices in Koreatown and hence some of the A24’s aura. It may be the second most difficult reservation to register. (Try the Taro Tokri, Tikka Chaat, and Tandoori Margarita.)
You’ll have no problem stepping into Barnes & Noble’s flagship store in Union Square, where A24 has curated a collection of merchandise that has attracted a cultural fanbase online. The day after seeing the play, I walked around for a while watching shoppers gravitate toward the sleek, futuristic display and browse the selection of books, LPs, collector’s DVDs, and assorted trinkets. Most of them were in their late twenties or early thirties. An elegant Korean woman wearing a large camel hair coat and a Balenciaga bag walked around the racks and picked out a few items that she told me were gifts for herself. (“I love their movies, and their merchandise is really cute,” she said, blushing.)
The screen is constantly evolving to keep up with the A24 releases. Today, there are LPs by Moussi In pictorial terms. Binding scenarios. pulp novels for Ti West’s slasher films; And art books, puzzles, card decks and a temple-shaped incense burner offering from midsummer The scented candles are meant to evoke different cinematic genres (horror, romantic comedy, noir).
One of the guys didn’t buy anything but photographed the A24 logo, which is a cool sign in itself. According to the store manager, this happens all the time. It’s hard to imagine any of the other major small studios, let alone the Big Five, inspiring this kind of audience. If the Criterion Collection — which also has a dedicated section at B&N — was a cinephile’s gateway to the past, A24 has sold itself as a gateway to the next wave of independent cinema.
Just before seven o’clock, I crossed rain-soaked Union Square to Regal Cinema for the New York premiere of the film DramaA24 version. Another long line. Those waiting seemed young, even by A24 standards, and unusually enthusiastic. I learned that many of them were NYU students who A24 invited to attend the event — and, more importantly, to publish about it. (“You have to be creative,” says a source at A24. “How do you create noise without traditional levels of advertising?”) The news spread. The line swelled into a crowd, leading to a collective scream as stars Robert Pattinson and Zendaya exited the truck to greet the crowd.
The tickets are designed to resemble wedding invitations. All the pre-marketing around the film made it a rom-com about weddings. By the time it premiered, the controversial drama was at the heart of the film Drama – That the bride (Zendaya) had planned a school shooting years ago but did not carry it out – it has not leaked yet. A24 was careful to keep it that way. Pattinson and Zendaya introduced the film, and a message appeared on the screen: “Please silence your devices and refrain from spoiling.” Drama So everyone has a chance to see.”
It’s the kind of corrupting oversight we’re more used to seeing from overprotective major studio franchises from Marvel, DC, and Lucasfilm than from a fickle independent film company. But A24 is no longer so volatile. Josh Safdie Marty Supremestarring Timothée Chalamet as 1950s ping-pong hero, was A24’s highest-grossing film to date, grossing over $200 million worldwide on an announced budget of $70 million. However, its trailer still has a guerrilla quality. At a surprise pop-up event in November on Grand Street in Manhattan, Chalamet fans waited in line for four hours, across two city blocks, for a chance to see and purchase the star. Marty Merchandise, including $250 windbreakers were worn on social media by the likes of Chalamet, Tom Brady and ballet star Misty Copeland (before Chalamet became an enemy of ballet stars).
I attended another A24 awards season pop-up around the same time, this one for Crushing machineIt is an MMA film directed by Benny Safdie, Josh’s brother and former directing partner, and starring Dwayne Johnson. For the three-day event, A24 transformed a space on Canal Street into a vintage Japanese video arcade.
“They’re really trying to get into the DNA that makes a movie a movie,” Safdie told me about A24’s marketing efforts when I caught up with him at the event. “That translates into very unique merchandise. They’re saying, ‘Hey, we believe in this, and all of this stuff is extra follow-through.'”
Our conversation is interrupted when Johnson pulls Safdie aside to introduce him to A 24’s fan and the budding director he’s just met. As an apology, he gave me his trademark rocker smile and shook my hand firmly. This moment was captured in an influencer’s video that has racked up 290,000 likes on Instagram, and is my most popular appearance on social media. Such was the power of A24’s (and Johnson’s) marketing machine.
The upcoming pop-ups, merchandise, restaurant, theater, listening parties and other real-world expansions seem designed to maintain the studio’s cool factor and embed its growth into the fabric of New York. The fact that so few people can get in is part of the point, a way to hedge against mass gravity trade-offs.
Does it work? From the conversations I had with their target audience of 20 people, the answer was yes. “They have blockbuster movies, but they’re still committed to making independent films,” says Emily Sipe, 25, an A24 fan who made her debut at the studio in 2017. Lady Bird. “A lot of the characters in the A24 movies or TV shows, they’re mostly in their late teens, late 20s, early 30s. You kind of feel it.” She has since become a member of the AAA24 club — the cost of membership recently jumped to $10 a month ($100 annually) — which gets you free tickets to the opening weekend of studio releases as well as a monthly magazine and deals on merchandise.
Lady Bird It was also the pivotal film A24 for Leah, a 24-year-old social media manager at a New York magazine. When I met her at dinner, she told me that she desperately wanted to leave magazines and that her dream in life was to work for A24. They will even wait tables.
This story appeared in the May 6 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.
