The state of NEON

Nishanth Bhargava looks at NEON’s festival strategy and their status vis-à-vis A24 and MUBI.

The latest dispatches from Cannes all bear the same headline—NEON has done it again. Jafar Panahi’s It Was Just an Accident and Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value, both distributed in the United States by NEON, won the coveted Palme d’Or and the Grand Prix respectively, marking the sixth year in a row that the winner of the festival’s highest prize was a NEON film. 

While an impressive stat on paper, praising NEON for winning six Palme d’Ors feels a bit like crediting a real estate agent for building a house, particularly because the independent film distributor bought the rights to Panahi’s movie just two days before it won the prize. It’s an indicator of just how blurred the distinction between the artistic and commercial value of film has become—the laurels NEON is now receiving from industry press celebrate not their ability to cultivate and support great artists, but their talent in making shrewd financial predictions.

The hope, clearly, is that the glow of their latest Palme d’Or will help the studio build both financial capital and cultural capital, allowing NEON to fashion themselves as a hub for serious artists making prestigious films. 

NEON got their start in 2017, founded by CEO Tom Quinn and Alamo Drafthouse co-founder Tim League in an attempt to found a distribution company catering to the tastes of a young and cultured audience. The films they’ve distributed vary wildly in genre and scope, from huge international dramas like Parasite, which brought in $262 million in worldwide box office revenue and won NEON four Academy Awards, to more understated documentaries like Seeking Mavis Beacon, a search for the Haitian actor who served as the model for a popular 1990s typing game. The distributor’s most recent high-profile success, however, is undoubtedly Sean Baker’s Anora, which brought NEON the 2024 Palme d’Or alongside five Academy Awards, including the coveted Best Picture and Best Actress prizes.

NEON’s strategy at festivals is distinct. They have been fast and loose in snapping up promising films at Cannes and elsewhere, searching for potential award winners and box office hits. Of the 14 films sold at this year’s Cannes so far, NEON has acquired 3 of them, buying up more films than any other distributor and beating out larger, more established competitors like Netflix and Sony Pictures. 

NEON also topped the 2024 film festival with five acquisitions, including this year’s Grand Prix winner Sentimental Value, which they bought before principal photography had even begun. NEON’s President of Acquisition Jeff Deutchman describes the distributor’s targets as “the rare films that are unique enough to break through the noise and demand that people leave their home for the cinema—that’s the single rule we apply to everything we do.” The implication is that commercial and artistic imperatives don’t have to run counter to one another—instead, a truly powerful film will draw in audiences through its quality alone. 

NEON isn’t the first distributor to run this playbook. The clearest example is A24 and the status they’ve built as indie tastemakers. With NEON and A24 seemingly competing for dominance over the same market, the past year has been abuzz with articles discussing the Cold War between the two distributors. Both distributors stand at the vanguard of a film scene best described as the “popular alternative”. Like the old radio label ‘adult contemporary,’ the term conveys not sonic or visual similarity, but a work’s seeming appeal to a certain demographic. 

As NEON founder Tom Quinn explained in 2017, NEON’s target demographic “skew[s] under 45… they have no aversion to violence, no aversion to foreign language and to non-fiction.” In an attempt to compete with the more established A24, NEON brought in two former A24 execs in 2023 to head up the distributor’s marketing division. The move, as well as subsequent attempts by NEON to expand their merchandise offerings and digital marketing efforts, seem to signal their intent to follow in A24’s footsteps. 

Underlying the actions of both studios, of course, are the imperatives of their financial backers, who smell blood in the water as large studios reel from Hollywood’s economic headwinds. A24 has had multiple funding rounds, the most recent of which was done at a valuation of $3.5 billion. Similarly-positioned indie film distributor MUBI (also a streaming platform), which found critical and commercial success with the release of The Substance (2024), recently took $100 million in a “growth investment” funding round led by VC firm Sequoia Capital. NEON, meanwhile, is wholly a subsidiary of entertainment conglomerate 30West, whose other forays into the leisure market include the live events firm Constellation Immersive and the craft brewery Creature Comforts. The Hollywood Reporter is calling it a three-way turf war between A24, NEON and MUBI. 

NEON’s films have found critical and box office success, but the brand itself still lacks the pull that A24 has used to build their rabid fanbase. While calling a movie “A24” brings to mind a vague but identifiable aesthetic, referring to a film as “NEON” has no particular resonance at all. 

The path forward for NEON is thus somewhat ambiguous—as impressive as NEON’s festival success has been. Still, cracks seem to be forming in A24’s armor. Recent criticism of Celine Song’s romance Materialists could signal the fact that A24’s star is beginning to fade amongst audiences. Moreover, much of A24’s upcoming slate (at least the films with set release dates) consists of films from established directors like Ari Aster and Spike Lee, which marks a continued shift from A24’s early strategy of gambling on breakout films by new and early-career talent. 

It’s hard to say whether NEON’s release strategy will be any different—the films on their release slate seem to mirror those on A24’s, with major releases by established, marketable filmmakers (such as Osgood Perkins’ Keeper and Julie Ducourneau’s Alpha) being complemented by smaller films headed up by emerging directors (like October’s Shelby Oaks, a horror film directed by movie YouTuber Chris Stuckmann). 

The similarities in the two release calendars extend to NEON’s slating a Dakota Johnson rom-com of their own, Splitsville, for release later this very summer. Could NEON really find success by beating A24 at their own game? It’s a possibility, particularly with the compounding momentum from the success of their films on the festival circuit—Charli XCX’s April proclamation that this year would be a “Joachim Trier Summer”  has since been repeated by Elle Fanning in t-shirt form. Ultimately, NEON’s influence will likely land in the vast expanse between a billion dollar valuation and getting everyone to take up smoking again.

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