SME#17: Bold enough to buy "Everything Everywhere All At Once" before its Oscars' success?
Streaming Made Easy #17
Welcome back to Streaming Made Easy. This week, we take a look at the early adopters of Oscar’s winning title “Everything Everywhere All At Once”.
In last week’s edition of SME, I discussed A24 Films and their edgy editorial line (at the time, I was in awe of the movie “The Whale” which won Best Actor for Brendan Fraser). Their boldness was rewarded big time at the Oscars on Sunday with another movie in their line up, “Everything Everywhere All At Once” (“EEAAO”), winning 7 out of 11 Awards nominations including Best Picture.
For those who haven’t watched the movie, the film is a hilarious and big-hearted sci-fi action adventure about an exhausted Chinese American woman (Michelle Yeoh) who can't seem to finish her taxes. It’s directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, collectively known as Daniels.
What I love about our industry is that it’s still full of surprises. After last year’s incident and the steady decline of viewership ratings over the years (see Evan Shapiro’s recent post on this), I have to say I didn’t expect much from the event. And yet it surprised us all by consecrating this out of the ordinary movie with a 25M$ budget.
25M$ may seem like a lot but it’s actually a tight budget for a Sci-fi movie which ended up grossing beyond the 100M$ mark at the Box Office (the 1st A24 movie to hit that milestone).
Source: The numbers
If you want to know how the Daniels managed to make every dollar count without sacrificing their vision, you should watch this video made by Studio Binder (spoiler alerts though).
It’s easy to congratulate the movie now but who believed in the movie in the 1st place and bought it after its SXSW debut in March 2022?
In France, the company Originals Factory led by Tristan Du Laz acquired the distribution rights to the film.
The release strategy is fascinating as it’s a true example of a tactical build up leading to awards’ season. Du Laz explains to movie outlet, Le Film Français, that EEAAO was indeed released in theaters in August ‘22, followed by a video release (yes it still exists) and then again a 2nd theatrical release in 40 theaters in March ‘23 (with 70 additional theaters added this week).
The 1st theatrical release garnered 350K ticket entries (quite the performance given the slow return to movie theaters post pandemic) and attracted the 14-34 demo, urban, tech savvy and female skewed. The 2nd release boosted by the Oscars aims at targeting a more mainstream audience of cinephiles.
The title is now also accessible on OCS, Orange’s Pay TV network soon to be Canal+, and it made me want to look up who were the other US and EU streamers or broadcasters bold enough to buy it prior its Oscars’ consecration. A mix of local and global players were truly inspired when they picked up the movie. As a former Acquisition executive, I wonder if any of them expected the movie to be such a hit. That’s the beauty of the job I guess.
This week, the movie is, of course, front and center on all of these platforms.
All in all, what matters most here is the fact that there’s hope yet. Our industry isn’t doomed like some folks love to predict. It is still possible to make great movies no one expects to see succeed. We just need executives with a hunch to make it happen.
Let movie makers be quirky so they can keep surprising us!
That’s it folks. Enjoy your weekend and see you next Friday for another edition of Streaming Made Easy!
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