A24’s ‘Beau Is Afraid’ Can’t Afford to Scare Off Theatergoers

A year after its best commercial success ever annihilated the Oscars, A24 is about to either keep the streak going or grind this momentum to a halt.

Beau Is Afraid, a three-hour surrealist comedy and the third film from horror director Ari Aster, is budgeted at $35 million. Thats more than the $25 million spent on directing duo Daniels Everything Everywhere All at Once, which swept the 95th Academy Awards to win best picture, director, original screenplay, three out of four acting awards and a host of other accolades. More importantly, Beau isthe most A24 has ever spent on a movie, making its wide release Friday one to watch.

The arthouse indie distributor is certainly smart to try and tackle the mid-budget market.

Spending more on Everything helped elevate the films fantasy-action sequences to such stature that rampant word-of-mouth success boosted the film to an eventual $77 million domestically and more than $130 million globally. As A24s biggest commercial success, the film helped make 2022 A24s best year at the domestic box office as well, undoing the two-year pandemic slump that followed the companys three-year hot streak from 2017 to 2019.

Asters last two movies, 2018s Hereditary and 2019s Midsommar, were both horror thrillers that did well during that timeframe and remain A24s No. 4 and No. 6 films domestically, per Comscore.

While Beau switches up genres, it could benefit easily from casting Joaquin Phoenix in the lead role. A24s No. 2 film at the domestic box office, 2019s Uncut Gems, similarly paired Adam Sandler with oddball directors Josh and Benny Safdie, netting the film a solid $50 million during the busy December holiday period. Two months before then, Phoenix starred in a little movie called Joker, the first and only R-rated film to break $1 billion globally thatalso won him the Oscar for best actor.

If anyone can make a three-hour R-rated surrealist bonanza break even on a $35 million budget, its Phoenix. Beaus limited opening on four screens last weekend is already the best indie opening of the year, and its $80K screen average per theater is the second best for A24 after Uncut Gems first hit theaters, a good sign that casting Phoenix was worth it. Still, reviews and audience reactions have been a lot more polarized than the near-unanimous praise bestowed upon Everything, making it a possibility the film could flounder outside the NY/LA safe zone for arthouse directors likeAster.

That said, another factor working in Beaus favor is its smart release window that will take advantage of the last couple spring weekends before Disney and Marvels third Guardians of the Galaxy kicks off the early summer season on May 5.

Given that families are currently obsessed with The Super Mario Bros. Movie, and John Wick 4 has earned most of its gross, now is the best time for a wildcard like Beau to shoot its shot and remind audiences of A24s theatrical prowess, especially after big-budget superhero sequels to Ant-Man and Shazam! saw more dour-than-usual turns in the first quarter of the 2022 calendar.

A24 was the best-performing studio at the 2022 domestic box office after the majors, even beating out mini-majors Lionsgate and MGM, which suffered from diminished slates. While Everything did the heavy lifting, horror films X, Bodies Bodies Bodies and Pearl helped build up annual gross during slower moments at the box office in March, August and September, respectively, a good reminder that genre films are typically the best way to win over moviegoers between major studio tentpoles.

Breaks between tentpoles have also been lucrative for anime distributor Crunchyroll, a subsidiary of Sony Group.

2021s Demon Slayer played a crucial role in enticing people back to theaters back when major studio releases were largely absent and is still the No.2 film of the pandemic era domestically, when major and mini-major releases are excluded. Very few non-major films released after March 2020 that hailed from distributors other than Lionsgate and MGM have grossed more than $20 million domestically, yet Crunchyroll has three such films to its name.

Likewise, Focus Features two best films in recent years were the second movie based on hit U.K. show Downton Abbey and Viking epic The Northman, the latter of which was directed by A24 alum Robert Eggers. In stark contrast to awards-season films Focus Features generally gets the most attention for, these films released much earlier in 2022 and were entirely absent from the Oscars. Searchlights best film of the pandemic, culinary thriller The Menu, was also skipped over by the Academy.

Another successful box-office run for A24 via Beau wont just cement the distributor as an entity thats here to stay itll further make the case for studios to invest more in genre fare that can bridge the gap between tentpoles.