We knew A24 had a decision to make on its streaming ambitions. The indie distributor’s output deal with Showtime, struck in 2019, expired in November, leaving A24’s movies without a dedicated digital home. Free agency can be quite lucrative.
Weeks later, A24 signed with Showtime’s biggest rival, HBO, and its sister streaming service Max. Upgrade.
A December 6 announcement unveiled a multiyear, pay-1 output deal for new A24 theatrical movies to run exclusively on HBO and Cinemax (yes, it is still a thing), and stream only on Max. The deal also extended A24’s 2022 licensing agreement with Max for older films, which covered more than two dozen movies.
Some of the newer A24 fare heading to the Warner Bros. Discovery platforms in the pay-1 window include 2023 theatrical releases “Past Lives,” “Dicks: The Musical,” “Priscilla,” “Dream Scenario,” “The Zone of Interest,” “The Iron Claw,” and the restored re-release of Talking Heads concert film “Stop Making Sense.” There are also the upcoming titles, “Love Lies Bleeding” and “Civil War,” to name a pair, and existing library titles like “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” “Uncut Gems,” “The Whale,” and more.
All told, the arrangement will bring more than 100 movies to Max over its term. That’s a big deal for A24, for Max, and for the cult of fans who worship at the altar of A24.
While financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, this is a great moment for A24. For starters, it aligns prestige indie films with what was long ago dubbed the “prestige TV” brand. For Max, it is the newest boast to hang on its tagline, “The One to Watch.”
Beyond the optics, there are the eyeballs. Max has way more subscribers than Paramount+ with Showtime, let alone the disappearing-before-our-very-eyes Showtime OTT app. As of September 30, WBD’s Max and Discovery+ had a combined 95.1 million subscribers — the (undisclosed) majority of those come from on Max. Paramount+ has just 63 million subs by comparison, and not all of those elect for the ad-free “with Showtime” tier. Showtime’s linear cable channel is likely the next platform to face elimination.
A24’s main rival in the specialty-distribution space is Neon, whose movies primarily live on Hulu as part of a 2017 output deal. Hulu has 48.5 million subscribers, but with its ongoing integration into Disney+ (112.6 subs), Hulu films and series may soon reach a larger market — or at least it will reach subscribers more seamlessly. The details of what Hulu content will go where are still being sorted out.
Speaking of the new Hulu tile on Disney+, maybe one day we’ll get an A24 tile (or landing page) on Max. The streamer already has tiles for Studio Ghibli (not owned by WBD) and DC (owned) titles, so it’s not too much of a stretch.
With or without the prime positioning, now is (apparently) the time to align with Max. (Just ask Netflix and Verizon.) Max is a much-improved app from its predecessor HBO Max. A day ahead of the A24 announcement, Max’s streaming PR team sent a 900-word letter to select media (including IndieWire) touting all of the ways the app now rules. The tech is better, the user experience is improved, and ratings (both for the actual app and in terms of viewership) are up. Max currently has a rating of 4.8 stars on the Apple Store and 4.7 on Google Play, while HBO Max when it was sunsetted had just a 3.3 rating on Apple and 3.5 on Google.
The HBO/Max deal is just for film, not TV. Both A24 and HBO would probably like to forget their recent small-screen collaboration “The Idol.” The brand’s “Beef” at Netflix was well-received, as is Nathan Fielder’s “The Curse” at Showtime, which still has several episodes to premiere. A24 previously had a deal to produce content for Apple TV+, which brought us “On the Rocks” and the Stephen Curry documentary “Underrated,” but that agreement has since expired.
It’s all quite impressive for a company that nearly sold itself off in 2021. At the time, A24 valued itself at $3 billion. Instead, the distributor took a $225 million equity investment and got to work.
