Battle of the Cool Kids: Inside the A24, Neon and Mubi Turf War

After the Cannes Film Festival premiere for Die My Love, stars Jennifer Lawrence, Robert Pattinson and director Lynne Ramsay held court in the back of a Croisette-adjacent restaurant at the film’s afterparty. As guests like Joaquin Phoenix, Charli XCX and Dakota Johnson shuffled in, one partygoer was stationed at the corner of the bar, barely looking up from his phone: Mubi chief content officer Jason Ropell. 

For Mubi, like many other specialty outfits heading to the fest with an ability to buy, Die My Love, with its A-list cast, awards potential and selective auteur (it’s Ramsay’s first feature since 2017’s You Were Never Really Here), was a priority. On the heels of a $1 billion valuation and a $100 million funding round headed by private equity firm Sequoia, Mubi landed the movie in a $24 million multi-territory deal.

This Cannes was the first with Mubi established as a true global player. In addition to Die My Love, Kelly Reichardt’s The Mastermind — a ’70s-set heist movie starring Josh O’Connor that premiered in Cannes competition — was Mubi’s first fully financed in-house feature. It was only last year that the London-based streamer picked up global rights to Coralie Fargeat’s body horror movie The Substance for $12 million after original distributor Universal let go of the film. The movie was seen as a way of helping launch itself in North America. The plan worked better than even it could have anticipated, with $17 million at the domestic box office and five Oscar nominations, including for best picture.

“You have one Substance and all of a sudden you get every call for every fucking movie,” says a U.S. agent whose talent works in the independent space.

The company is now closing the gap between itself and A24 and Neon, with the three going head-to-head at more film festivals. But even if they are occasionally bidding for the same titles in Park City and Cannes (see Eva Victor’s Sundance standout Sorry, Baby), Neon, Mubi and A24 represent three different futures of indie cinema. Even if they are increasingly getting lumped together by both the industry and consumers, their businesses are incredibly different, according to a dozen insiders working in the global independent market that talked to The Hollywood Reporter.

Tom Quinn’s Neon has positioned itself as a curatorial powerhouse, a legendary “Palme d’Or whisperer” and purveyor of high-end horror. At this year’s Cannes, Neon kept up its streak — six years and running — with its acquisition of Jafar Panahi’s best picture winner It Was Just an Accident, one of a slate of awards season hopefuls nabbed on the Croisette, including Oliver Laxe’s Sirât and Kleber Mendonça Filho’s The Secret Agent.

Neon has shown with Bong Joon Ho’s Parasite and Sean Baker’s Anora that it knows how to navigate the Cannes-to-Oscar pipeline while also turning festival hype into box office gold. Anora earned more than $20 million domestically and grabbed the best picture statuette. But it wasn’t so long ago that the company had an unfortunate one-two punch of Ferrari and Origin, splashy projects that ended with a combined $23 million at the North American box office and no major awards nominations.

Since then, the distributor has been on a hot streak. In addition to its awards contenders, it has homegrown horror thrillers like Longlegs and The Monkey (a combined $93 million, domestically). Neon, which acquired the Sundance genre standout Together, has told partners it is looking to lead the specialty horror space.

Then there is the upstart turned elder statesman of the group, A24. As one producer who works in the indie space puts it, “Neon and Mubi can run because A24 walked.”

As of late, A24 has been acquiring fewer finished films as it continues to scale its in-house productions at an impressive clip. Its most recent valuation at $3.5 billion, following a secured a $250 million round in June 2024 led by a $75 million investment from Josh Kushner’s Thrive Capital, has buoyed the efforts.

But worrying to some is A24’s box office performance in the first half of the year. Genre titles like the Ayo Edebiri-fronted Opus ($2 million domestic) and the splashier Jenna Ortega-starring Death of a Unicorn ($12.8 million domestic) underperformed, as did the studio’s attempt at the kid movie Legend of Ochi ($2.4 million domestic). There is also Danny and Michael Philippou’s horror Bring Her Back, which netted $14 million in its first two weekends domestically, unlikely to catch up to the duo’s first A24 title, Talk to Me, a Sundance acquisition that earned $48 million in North America. Of course, the company can mitigate financial windfalls with its rich output deals, like the pay-one agreement with WBD that sees A24 stream on HBO Max (née Max).

Further adding to the A24 anxiety in the specialty and art house space is the mini-major’s more commercial lean. It’s investing in bigger IP — there’s an upcoming Elden Ring video game adaptation from Alex Garland — and potential franchises. It missed out on buying Halloween and 28 Days Later but has a second Talk to Me coming and Onslaught, a chiller from Godzilla vs. Kong director Adam Wingard.

Nonetheless, multiple agents tell THR that directors still strive to have the A24 logo open their films. And the rest of its year is packed with potential, from Dwayne Johnson’s The Smashing Machine to Timothée Chalamet’s Marty Supreme, each from a Safdie brother.

“A24 opened up the space that we’re in,” one veteran indie film executive noted. “Even if they’ve moved beyond that space now and are a little bit more concerned with [more mainstream] films.”

For anyone looking to divine where the other two outfits are hoping to expand, look no further than recent hires.

Scaling at a much more measured pace is Neon. The company, privately held by Dan Friedkin and Micah Green’s 30West, secured a new $200 million credit line at the end of last year from a lending consortium led by Comerica Bank to provide it with sufficient capital to sustain its aggressive acquisitions. In Cannes, Neon named marketing maestro Ryan Werner of Cinetic Marketing its new president of global cinema. Werner’s exact purview is unclear, but his appointment could mark a shift toward more international releasing.

Ahead of Sundance, Mubi hired longtime IFC Films president Arianna Bocco as its new senior vp global distribution. The indie exec has a lot of goodwill in the domestic space and is seen as a bolstering of further efforts to push into North America. In May, Mubi said it was launching a theatrical operation in Italy, with former Lucky Red exec Gabriele D’Andrea overseeing.

While Neon and A24 still do the majority of their exhibition business domestically, Mubi’s scope is global. The company’s primary business is still its international streaming service (the “Netflix for art house”), and when it buys titles, it buys for the world, or as much of the world as it can get. “Mubi is doing things differently, maybe because they’re European, maybe because they’re primarily a tech company,” says one European producer with several films on the platform. “They are less focused on one territory than on building a global audience for these kind of movies.”

It’s likely that audience accounts for the true land grab.

“It’s the Letterboxd crowd,” one sales agent surmises. Put another way: each slate attracts self-proclaimed cinephiles.

Each actively courts that audience in its own way, usually with guerrilla tactics and internet-focused marketing efforts. A24 feeds the lore of its brand with a membership program that gives access to exclusive merch. Neon had a screening of Anora for sex workers and sold branded thongs. Mubi sponsors a 35-seat “microcinema” in East L.A.’s favorite revival house, Vidiots.

Despite competition, industry insiders see room for all to thrive. A Euro sales agent who deals with all three firms adds: “The hope is that they all succeed. The indie market needs more than one strong buyer and more than one strong model for the future.” 

This story appeared in the June 11 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.