Tom Quinn

Source: Source: Courtesy of Neon

Tom Quinn

Neon CEO Tom Quinn shared insight into the US distributor’s buying and marketing strategy, and also addressed talk that his business is for sale, in a wide-ranging on-stage conversation at the Zurich Film Festival’s annual industry Summit.

Quinn was honoured with the festival’s Game Changer Award last night (September 28), just months after Neon saw its sixth film in a row win the Palme d’Or at Cannes.

Asked if Neon is for sale, Quinn said: “We are, sadly, all for sale. The conceit of this being a business that was created to achieve an exit was never my aim or goal. If there is an exit, it will appear. This is what I want to do. It is what I want to keep doing.”

The executive said Neon had had a “ton of incoming” interest in the business. Earlier this year, a report in The Wrap linked Neon to interested parties such as Criterion owner Steven Rales, veteran producer Peter Chernin and former Universal Studios chief Ron Meyer, although nothing had materialised.

“If nothing else, it’s a great validation for what we’re trying to accomplish, that people are noticing. And we are a real business. We have a lot of pedigree around what we do. We have a lot of mantra and vision for what we believe in. But the reality is, it’s turned out to be a real business, and that to me is what I am most proud of.”

Quinn, who was interviewed on stage in Zurich by CAA Media Finance co-head Roeg Sutherland, credited Sutherland with helping introduce him to Neon’s first investor, Jackie Chan’s SR Media. “Without Roeg and that first $15m, I doubt we would be up and running,” said Quinn, who launched Neon in 2017.

He stressed that Neon, which is majority owned by Dan Friedkin’s 30West, was a disciplined business. “We eat everything that we hunt. We received an initial equity investment and a second equity investment from Dan Friedkin and 30West but we haven’t taken any additional investment since then. It’s a testament to us, nine years in, that this is sustainable.” 

Neon backstory

The company’s first big deal was its 2017 acquisition for I, Tonya, which went on to take $30m at the US box office, as well as garnering three Oscar nominations (including for star Margot Robbie) and one win. “We plonked down $6m to buy I Tonya and everything changed after that,” said Quinn. “Going into an Oscar campaign two weeks after buying the film, we really honed our chops and proved our place in the industry.”

Since then, Neon has distributed the past six Palme d’Or winners: It Was Just An Accident, Anora, Anatomy Of A Fall, Triangle Of Sadness, Titane and Parasite. Earlier this year, Sean Baker’s Anora won five Oscars.

Recent releases include Osgood Perkins’ The Monkey, which took $40m at the US box office. The previous year Perkins’ Longlegs scored $75m at the US box office, Neon’s biggest ever release.

Quinn also reflected on his 30-year career, saying he had worked on “over 400” films. Before setting up Neon, he worked at The Weinstein Company’s label Radius, Mark Cuban’s Magnolia Pictures and the Samuel Goldwyn Company.

“I catalogued all of Sam Goldwyn’s files. I ran the projection booth. I was a manager in development, production, acquisitions, trying to figure out what I wanted to do. Seven and a half years there gave me a pathway to figure out I’d like to have more control over the movies that we buy, how they’re marketed and publicised. That led me to Magnolia, where Mark Cuban essentially gave me full rein to go buy 40 movies a year. By doing, I got to learn.”

Quinn said it took two years to raise the finance to launch Neon, and that he initially thought his main competitor for acquisitions would be A24.

“The reality is for the first six years we were competing with Netflix. A lot of these movies they also wanted…I was very surprised to see them at every turn. They wanted Portrait Of A Lady On Fire, they were our biggest competitor. We popped down $1.6m for this French-language film for North America which was sort of unheard of. But that was just a clear conviction that this is a once-in-a-lifetime movie.”

Acquisition strategy

Asked about how he approaches acquisitions and watches film, Quinn said: “I want to forget everything I’ve learned immediately. I want to be a pure audience member.” He also paid tribute to the Neon team, which initially began as six people working out of a WeWork office. He cited Neon’s VP of acquisitions and production Jason Wald for persuading him to buy Longlegs.

“He brought me Longlegs. He showed me this little two-minute clip. I said, ‘You gotta be kidding, we’re not doing this.’ And he’s like, ‘I think you’re missing it.’ And I said, ‘Okay, alright, this is important to you. Let’s do it.’ And lo and behold, Oz delivered this movie and when I saw it, I was like ‘Oh my God, I totally get it. This is fucking great. This is a beautifully, beautifully made horror film.’”

Similarly, Quinn said that the acquisition of Justine Triet’s Anatomy Of A Fall was “entirely Jeff Deutchman”, Neon’s president of acquisitions and production. Added Quinn: “We don’t do groupthink. We’re not sitting around and deciding by committee. And I’m not a big fan that.”

He explained that he had learned the hard way that acquisitions execs have to be able to persuade their boss to buy a film they believe in.

“I learned that a long time ago, working for Sam Goldwyn, I couldn’t convince him to buy what turned out to be an Oscar-winning film two years in a row. I then realised it’s not his fault, it’s my fault. I’m just not doing a good enough job convincing him and/or just taking complete control of the situation and going and negotiating for the film myself and taking that risk.”

Creative marketing

Quinn also talked about how Neon marketed its films and how the company competed against the big US studios spending many millions to release films.

“Limitation is the mother of invention. We never had the ability or capacity to do it. So we had to learn how to do something else – brand, social handles, and using our own slate of films to collectively sell the next one. In theatre trailer play is still the most important reason why people come to your movies, even in the digital age that we live in.

“The other thing is we don’t do ego-based marketing. LA and New York are plastered with all sorts of out-of-home advertising. It’s very inefficient. It pollutes the city in a way. We just don’t do it. We’ll do maybe one billboard that’s more impactful by virtue of how it’s perceived on social than it is actually by eyeballs on the street.”

Quinn also stressed the importance of campaign creativity, and credited the company’s chief marketing officer Christian Parks. “We won last year [at the Clio Entertainment Awards] for our Longlegs campaign the studio of the year, which an independent had never won.”

“We spent $10m opening that film. We could have spent $15m, but we knew we didn’t need to. We could see day to day the amount of interaction and validation that we were getting across our materials and world-building. The billboard for that film is a phone number. It doesn’t say the movie. It doesn’t say the company. Doesn’t say the opening date. It says a phone number. In less than four days, there are 1.5 million calls to a phone number listening to Nick Cage as Longlegs.”

Quinn’s continued appetite for the business was clearly on display at the Summit. “My favourite thing to do is to buy the movie during the screening, send an offer on email and demand that the film deal be closed by the end of the movie, which I have done before. They are some of my best acquisitions such as Let The Right One In and Cutie And The Boxer.

“I love the gig. I love the sport of it. But at the end of the day, the thing that truly has legacy is the art of it. The art of it is something that is so important, especially today, more so today than ever. Céline Sciamma said something that has always stuck with me. If your art isn’t political, is it actually art? And I firmly believe that.”

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