24 Hours Inside Film Studio A24

The Cherry Lane Theatre

Courtesy of A24

Commerce Street in the West Village is one of only two L-shaped streets in Manhattan and by far the more picturesque. The adjoining brick houses that form its corner were built in 1844 as the home of an Irish dry goods merchant named Alexander Turney Stewart, who invented the concept of the department store. A savvy marketer, Stewart had the idea to place cases of his wares on the sidewalk outside his store to clutter the entrance and draw a crowd. In so doing, he helped establish one of the fixtures of buzz-building in New York: the sidewalk queue as both an indicator of and a driver of trendiness, from Supreme streetwear drops in the ’90s and the Cronut in the 2010s to whatever photogenic foodstuff blows up on TikTok these days to ensnare young New Yorkers into — as SNL put it in a recent sketch — a “big dumb line.”

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It is on this corner, at the front of a line on a chilly April evening, that I began a 24-hour immersion into the New York of A24, the Manhattan-based indie film and TV studio behind such edgy, auteur-driven hits as Lady Bird, Everything Everywhere All at Once, Beef and Euphoria. In the past two years, it has purchased and overhauled the historic 167-seat Cherry Lane Theatre on Commerce Street and opened a 45-seat restaurant within, Wild Cherry, now one of the toughest reservations in the city. Every night, in-the-know culturati line up to try their luck for rush tickets or for a barstool at Wild Cherry. I was one of them.

The idea behind the theater and the restaurant, an A24 source tells me, was to parlay the trust the studio has built among its core fan base of young cinephiles into deeper cultural engagement, rooted in the real world — and specifically in downtown Manhattan. But it’s also an exercise in brand-building, an effort to retain its cool-kid image as it grows.

The revamped Cherry Lane Theatre, which A24 purchased in 2023

Courtesy of A24

The company now finds itself at a crossroads, in some ways a victim of its own success. Renowned as much for its taste as for its marketing acumen, the 13-year-old studio has developed a cult following not just for its films and shows but for the A24 brand itself. It is financed largely by such private equity firms as Thrive Capital and Guggenheim Partners and was valued two years ago at $3.5 billion, more than 10 times the valuation of its closest indie rival, Neon. It’s hard to justify that amount with the kind of mid-budget art films the studio built its reputation on, which may explain why both its budgets and box office grosses have swelled in recent years as it has pursued a wider audience. But now it’s facing the thermodynamics of trends: The cooler something is, the more popular it gets, and the more popular it gets, the less cool it seems.

Thanks to Cherry Lane and Wild Cherry, it can now lay claim to one of the most culturally vibrant corners in New York, which has become the ultimate IRL manifestation of A24’s edgy ethos as it seeks to expand into live events, music, books, merchandising and lifestyle — all without sacrificing its cognoscenti cachet.

I set out on my 24-hour experiment to see if it was working. I arrived at the Cherry Lane 20 minutes early for a revival of Clare Barron’s play You Got Older, starring Alia Shawkat (Search Party) and Peter Friedman (Succession). In the mood for a quick drink, I squeezed past the ticket line to Wild Cherry, where a seat at the curved bar miraculously opened up. The hostess warned me that there would be no intermission and urged me to use the restroom first. I had just enough time to down a dirty martini and take in the neo-brasserie decor before a big dumb line formed outside the restaurant’s bathroom.

Founded in 1923, the Cherry Lane calls itself the birthplace of off-Broadway. It’s where Edward Albee premiered plays, where Tony Curtis was discovered, where a teenage Barbra Streisand worked as a set painter. A24 bought it for slightly more than $10 million in 2023, reopening it in 2025 after an overhaul. For an indie company that trades on the offbeat, there is perhaps no more prestigious cultural prize in New York.

Under its new program director, Dani Rait, a former SNL talent booker, Cherry Lane has put on the critically acclaimed one-woman show Weer and a string of FOMO-inducing events, including concerts by Florence Welch and Brandi Carlile, a surprise stand-up set by Adam Sandler and “Sundays With Sofia,” a screening series hosted by frequent A24 director Sofia Coppola.

The audience for You Got Older seemed about 30 years younger than the average Broadway crowd, and significantly more tattooed. There were many mustaches and many cocktails, which might explain why they excitedly laughed at bits th