Past Lives — A24, 2023

Director-led upside. A24 acquired the film pre-Sundance on the strength of the screenplay and Celine Song's profile as a playwright. The bet was on a debut filmmaker who could be developed across multiple titles, not on the film alone.

Adult arthouse vacuum. The 25–55 specialty audience had no clean alternative in the first half of 2023. A quietly emotional drama with literary positioning gave A24 ownership of a lane that no streamer was contesting.

Awards platform. The acquisition was priced with a year-end awards push baked in. A24 modelled the film as a Best Original Screenplay and Best Picture conversation piece, not a January arthouse release.

• January. Sundance world premiere. Critic-led reviews drive the conversation with a focus on the script and the lead performance.
• February–May. Berlin Competition slot used to widen international press footprint and seed distribution in non-US markets.
• June. US theatrical release in four NY/LA screens, expanded weekly. Marketing leans on poster art and pull quotes rather than a heavy trailer cycle.
• July–September. Sustained per-screen averages and awards-season repositioning. Director becomes the public face of the campaign.
• Q4. Awards run with FYC mailers, screenwriter-led panels, and limited streaming availability timed to nominations voting.

Pre-Sundance acquisitions remain the cleanest A24 lane. Buying before the festival lets A24 control positioning from day one and avoid bidding wars that compress margins.

Director development is the underwriting model. The price is justified less by a single film's P&L than by the studio's ability to retain the filmmaker for two or three subsequent projects on favourable terms.

Diasporic stories no longer require an explanatory campaign. The marketing did not treat the bilingual narrative as a barrier to overcome. That is a meaningful shift from a decade earlier and changes the comp set used for similar acquisitions.

This case is repeatable for a single distributor in a year, not multiple per quarter. The constraints are: a debut filmmaker with literary or theatre credibility; a screenplay that travels in translation; a January launch that allows a full 11-month runway; and an awards body still receptive to quiet drama. When any one of those breaks, the case study reverts to a Limited Theatrical row in the database, not the awards row.