But while some may have guessed that Neon’s victory would send fellow indie studio A24—which backed this year’s Best Picture contender The Brutalist and recent winners Everything Everywhere All At Once and Moonlight—into full jealous stepsister mode, Neon CEO Tom Quinn insists that there’s no rivalry between the two companies. “It’s good headlines,” he surmised about the persistent rumor.
Quinn also thought A24 would be the studio’s biggest competitor when it started out, but that wasn’t the case; somewhat surprisingly, it turned out to be Netflix. “They desperately tried to beat us to buy I, Tonya and Portrait Of A Lady On Fire,” he shared, providing a wretched glimpse into a timeline where no one got to see Héloïse crying to Vivaldi on the big screen. But before you thank your lucky stars too much for that, he went on to share some equally depressing information about the universe we do live in. Apparently, the two studios also battled over Hit Man, May December, and Fair Play, all three of which Netflix won.
Would Charles Melton have his Oscar if the Todd Haynes film had landed in different hands? We’ll never know, but Neon is building themselves a pretty great résumé, while Netflix’s big push this year was… Emilia Pérez. The streamer probably wishes they had used their considerable resources to snap up Anora instead, but in the words of the woman of the hour, “Jealousy is a disease, remember that!”
