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It is Monday, October 6th.

There are many meaningful brands for a movie studio.

After all, what does it mean to be a Warner Brothers movie or Paramount or Lionsgate?

But you hear A-24 and you kind of know what it's going to be.

Quality, boundary pushing, cool even.

For more than a decade, A-24 has built a brand as the studio that releases the indie movies at,

if you care about such things, people you know are talking about.

They've had two best picture winners, Moonlight and everything everywhere all at once,

and they've cultivated a hip New York image complete with the viral marketing stunts,

the logo hats.

They just bought a performance space in the West Village and they're opening a restaurant.

But that's kind of changing.

In reality, as we've discussed on the show, 824 has always been a private equity play.

Initially backed by Guggenheim Partners, where co-founder Daniel Katz worked,

it's raised millions from institutional investors a few times over the years, launched its own production studio and TV division. Got backing from Josh

Kushner and Thrive Capital a few years ago. That gave the company a $3.5 billion valuation last

year. That was up 40% from a 2022 raised by investment firm Stripes. And with that new money

has come a slightly new and different mandate, namely bigger movies, more produced in-house,

...