The 2024 box office has had its ups and downs so far, but two leading distributors outside of the studio system continue to hit box office milestones.

Neon horror film “Longlegs” opened to $22 million last weekend, the best wide opening yet for the distributor after “Immaculate” in March and “Ferrari” last December did the same. A24 also achieved the same milestone three months ago with “Civil War.”

The record openings set at either distributor were largely the result of heavy marketing campaigns coming to fruition.

However, their overall strategies differ greatly.

“Longlegs” benefited heavily from outside-the-box marketing ploys, such as a ‘90s-style website dedicated to its serial killer subject matter and a dedicated hotline so callers could listen to star Nicolas Cage creepily sing “Happy Birthday” between bouts of gibberish.

That word-of-mouth momentum further helped “Longlegs” stand out as a darker option for thrill-seeking adults amid animated blockbusters “Despicable Me 4” and “Inside Out 2,” whose massive turnouts have largely escaped other films from the major studios in a year overshadowed by strike-related delays that have left gaps in the calendar.

And unlike major studios’ shaky tendency to spend hundreds of millions for the budgets of franchise fire, “Longlegs” instantly made back its cost thanks to lean expenses that came in under $10 million, including marketing — 2024 is by far Neon’s best year at the box office to date.

“Longlegs” did overshadow A24’s recent horror outing “MaXXXine,” which hit theaters a week earlier, but that distributor is still enjoying what is shaping up to be its best year too, thanks to “Civil War.” A24’s most expensive film to date, the war thriller took advantage of a diminished spring calendar and politically tense election year by plastering images of a war-torn U.S. everywhere, driving enough filmgoers out to Imax showings for A24 to best its previous record opening in 2018 horror effort “Hereditary.”

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