Boutique indie distributors function as R and D arms for media conglomerates

Evidence

By the time you read this, it’s possible that A24 will have been acquired by Apple, as trade-press rumors of A24’s $3 billion price have been common, with Apple as its likely buyer. Similar to the indie “gold rush” that occurred in the 1990s, when Miramax, New Line, Good Machine, and others were purchased by the entertainment conglomerates of the time, a new wave of consolidation and media empire-building is under way. … Just as Miramax and its ilk developed new audiences with innovative marketing strategies that were eventually funneled into the Disney and Warner empires, distributors like A24 operate as the research and development arms of transnational tech and media companies—though, considering Guggenheim’s colonial and imperial heritage, as well as Apple and Amazon’s reinvention of these practices, it is more accurate to refer to A24’s role as “pioneering” a new audience. — Andrew deWaard, Derivative Media, 284

Categorization

• XREF: The R-and-D framing of A24 echoes the earlier 1990s pattern where Miramax developed indie audiences that Disney then funneled — the book’s core premise that financial consolidation remakes culture.