When Sean Baker was about to launch his acclaimed “Anora,” he contemplated the cruel actuality of placing out an art-house film — even a much-anticipated one — in 2024. “Sometimes I tweet about my film,” the writer-director advised The Occasions in early October, “and the first question that comes back is: When will it be streaming?”
It’s a standard lament. Terrific movies abound, however the viewers that when rushed to see them in theaters has shrunk. COVID-19 compelled the momentary closure of multiplexes, however whereas spectacle-laden blockbusters have regained their pre-2020 mojo, indie films nonetheless wrestle to coax viewers to go away their properties.
But regardless of main obstacles, together with the widespread shuttering of art-house-friendly theaters, some indies thrived this 12 months, together with “Anora.” And it wasn’t simply because these movies have been artistically achieved — it’s as a result of ingenious advert campaigns helped make them really feel like occasions you wanted to expertise on the massive display.
As Christian Parkes, chief advertising and marketing officer for Neon, the studio behind “Anora” and the 2020 Oscar-winning “Parasite,” places it, the trick is to “make [viewers] feel like you’re missing out on an important conversation if you’re not there opening weekend.” In 2024, Neon succeeded with two very totally different films: the horror-thriller “Longlegs,” which grossed $127 million worldwide, and “Anora,” which rode its Palme d’Or win at Could’s Cannes Movie Competition to $29 million globally up to now.
Maika Monroe and Nicolas Cage in a poster for Neon’s “Longlegs.” The studio strategically obscured Cage’s face in advertising and marketing supplies.
(Neon)
When Neon first met with “Longlegs” writer-director Osgood Perkins, Parkes’ group pitched a cryptic viral advert marketing campaign that put viewers within the perspective of Maika Monroe’s detective, who seeks to unmask the enigmatic titular serial killer. “We give the audience these clues that they can piece together to unlock the mystery of the film,” Parkes explains.
That meant concealing the film’s star, Nicolas Cage, who performs Longlegs, within the advertising and marketing supplies. Provocatively, Neon designed a easy black billboard that featured an excessive closeup of an unrecognizable Cage alongside a phone quantity and launch date. Parkes hoped the curious would name the quantity, which led to a disturbing recording from Cage as Longlegs, however he didn’t anticipate the billboard’s seismic affect.
“The message was so creepy, people started pranking their friends,” Parkes recollects. “People were texting their parents: ‘Hey, Mom, I just got a new phone number. Can you call it and make sure that it works.’ And then [the parents] would call and then text them back, and be like, ‘I don’t know what that is — that’s terrifying!’ That thing took [on] a life of its own.”
Whereas the “Longlegs” marketing campaign cannily deemphasized its marquee title, the “Anora” advertisements pushed its greatest asset, utilizing the tagline “A love story from Sean Baker.”
“Sean is his own genre,” Parkes says of the auteur behind “The Florida Project” and “Tangerine.” “He’s created his own world of movies. [‘Anora’] is a love story that only he could create. It became about tailoring that film in a way that would appeal to a young cinephile audience, the Letterboxd crowd.”
A part of Parkes’ rationale was that youthful viewers have been receptive to returning to theaters since COVID, whereas older viewers have stayed away. “It’s very difficult to change consumer behavior,” Parkes says. “There’s a lost audience that isn’t going to come back. The older-skewing audience got comfortable staying at home.”
Which is why Jason Cassidy, vice chairman of Focus Options, is happy that his firm’s Oscar contender, “Conclave,” bucked the percentages. On paper, director Edward Berger’s adaptation of Robert Harris’ novel, in regards to the behind-the-scenes political maneuvering concerned in deciding on a brand new pope, appears precisely just like the sort of grown-up drama that suffers at in the present day’s artwork home. However the crowd-pleasing thriller has been a smash, gathering $31 million domestically up to now.
Cassidy acknowledges that Focus, which releases extra mainstream specialty fare resembling “Downton Abbey,” wasn’t courting the identical hip crowd that goes to “Anora.” “With this spectacular cast, they naturally lean older,” he says. However he believed that was a promoting level. “[‘Conclave’] looks like one of those classic movies that’s going to deliver, for those older audiences, really juicy entertainment, giving them what they want. We call it a ‘familiar surprise’ — [people] want to have a sense of what kind of movie it is, but it’s something that overdelivers and surprises you.”
Ralph Fiennes and Stanley Tucci, proper, star in “Conclave,” a movie that originally drew older audiences however quickly introduced in youthful moviegoers who had enjoyable making memes about it.
(Uncredited / Related Press)
Consequently, Focus mounted a reasonably conventional, old school art-house marketing campaign, highlighting the movie’s starry ensemble — together with Ralph Fiennes, John Lithgow, Stanley Tucci and Isabella Rossellini — catchy premise and unique Vatican setting. “I think about 77% of the [initial] audience was 35 years or older,” says Cassidy. “[We were] positioning it as the first movie to be seen as a real best picture contender. For those older audiences, being able to event-ize it helped it [become] a must-see for them.”
However as soon as “Conclave” continued to hold round in theaters, youthful viewers began seeing the movie too — after which taking to social media, crafting parody mashups and stanning their favourite characters. “We saw it getting memed all over the place and loved it and certainly tried to lean into that,” Cassidy says. Focus’ social media accounts started retweeting the most well-liked memes, even creating their very own based mostly on customers’ posts. “It helped connect it with the zeitgeist and fuel the success of the film.”
Myriad difficulties for art-house cinema stay, however “Longlegs,” “Anora” and “Conclave” reveal how savvy advertising and marketing can attain and mobilize discriminating viewers. For each Parkes and Cassidy, the challenges within the market require specialty studios to get extra inventive in convincing audiences that smaller movies are well worth the time, cash and energy to go to the theater.
Parkes sums it up succinctly: “If I’m going to get off the couch and pay my 15 bucks, give me something special.”