A24 has about 300 employees. For close to three years, fewer than 10 of them knew the studio was filming Elizabeth Holmes, the Theranos founder convicted of fraud. Nothing leaked. Then A24 did something smarter than keeping quiet. It sold the silence.
The Telluride Film Festival, on Sept. 6, was the reveal. A crowd of 650 sealed their phones in locking pouches and sat down with no idea what was coming. The teaser dropped the same day and went viral. Memes of Holmes and director Nathan Fielder locking eyes spread fast. John Jurgensen and Ben Fritz tell the story in the Journal's Exchange section.
Just over a month later, You Can See Everything opened in more than 800 theaters. It took in $15 million and sold out more than 3,000 showings. That's the biggest opening for a non-music documentary since 2004. Some 70% of the ticket buyers were under 35. This weekend it grows to 2,600 theaters, the size of a big studio release. A24 plans an Oscar campaign for best picture. No documentary has ever been nominated for that prize.
The brand is the business
A studio is usually worth whatever its record of hits and flops says it is. A24 has a second asset, a brand people trust. Young people say “Let’s go see an A24 movie,” producer David Permut told the Journal. Fans buy the merchandise and join a membership club. That brand got the private company valued at $3.5 billion as of 2024. Google (GOOGL) took a stake in June, and fans on Reddit mourned. The box office didn't notice. A24 has the sixth-highest box office of any studio this year. It's spending nearly $200 million on an Elden Ring film due in 2028.
Hits still rule, though. As the Holmes film blew up, A24's Chris Rock film Misty Green limped to $141,000 over two weeks. CEO Daniel Katz and film chief David Fenkel keep low profiles. The Telluride director calls them “a Goldilocks company.” Just the right size, so far.
Our read
This is an Investments/Risk story, IN04, dressed up as a movie story. A brand you trust is a moat. It got A24 a $3.5 billion price and a Google check. But the cash still arrives one hit at a time. The same month produced a $15 million opening and a $141,000 flop. Every business valued on a story works this way, public or private. The story sets the price. The hits pay the bills. Alphabet's A24 stake is almost surely a rounding error for a company its size. We hold GOOGL at weight in 28 books. Nothing added.
For your own plan, the one thing to look at is how much of your stock money sits in story names, the ones you own because the brand is exciting. The one check this week is to pull your top five holdings. Ask of each one what pays the bills, and what happens in a flop year. If you can't answer the second part, size it smaller. A24 kept its secret for three years. Your portfolio shouldn't keep any from you. Check the roof before the rain, and the holdings before the next big opening.