Why Did the Indie Film Studio A24 Buy an Off Broadway Theater?

New York Times

2 days ago

In the two years since A24, the artistically ambitious film and television studio, purchased Manhattan's Cherry Lane Theater, the historic West Village building has been dark, at least from the outside. But inside, the company behind 'Moonlight,' 'Everything Everywhere All at Once' and 'Euphoria' has been quietly overhauling the facility, and in September Cherry Lane will reopen as the first live performance venue run by the indie powerhouse.
The company says it plans a wide-ranging slate of programming, prioritizing theater — Cherry Lane describes itself as the birthplace of the Off Broadway movement — but also featuring comedy, music and film.
Another attraction: food. A24 has enlisted the Frenchette Group, which runs several lauded eateries in Manhattan (including Frenchette, Le Rock and Le Veau d'Or), to open a small restaurant and bar at Cherry Lane. The restaurant, called Wild Cherry in a nod to the theater's name, will be Frenchette's second collaboration with a downtown cultural institution — it also operates a bakery cafe inside the Whitney Museum.
Among the initial programming highlights will be a Sunday film series curated by Sofia Coppola (first film: Adrian Lyne's 'Foxes' from 1980) and a five-week run of 'Weer,' a one-woman show from the clowning comedian Natalie Palamides (each half of her body plays a different partner in a romantic couple). There will also be a week of opening events, starting Sept. 8, that includes comedy, music, a play reading and a block party. The venue does not plan to announce a season, or to have subscribers — it wants the nimbleness to extend or add events as it goes.
'First and foremost, we really want this to be a place where people can be sure they'll see a great, good quality piece of live performance,' said Dani Rait, who spent a decade at 'Saturday Night Live,' helping to book hosts and musical guests, before A24 hired her to head programming at Cherry Lane. 'And it's an opportunity for discovery — for artists to have a stage and connect with audiences in a really intimate way.'
A24 has built a staff of 30 to run the Cherry Lane — some of the employees retained from the theater's previous incarnation.
This summer, A24 has been holding a series of private events at the theater to see how it works with audiences in the seats and artists on the stage. There has been comedy by Ramy Youssef, a staged reading of a new play called 'Fabulous Pasta Salad,' and film screenings.
Last month, I attended a Cherry Lane album listening event featuring the band Haim. Over the course of an evening the three Haim sisters showed music videos, played audio tracks from their new album, talked about how some of the songs came about and performed one song live. They also made several jokes about hoping A24 would hire them for movie projects (all of them were featured in the film 'Licorice Pizza').
A24's takeover of the 167-seat theater comes at a time of significant commercial investment in an Off Broadway scene long dominated by nonprofits. Audible, a subsidiary of Amazon, now operates the Minetta Lane Theater in Greenwich Village; Seaview Productions, a company half-owned by Sony Music Masterworks, is leasing the former Tony Kiser Theater in Midtown, and No Guarantees Productions, backed by Christine Schwarzman, is taking over Astor Place Theater in NoHo, where the Blue Man Group splattered paint and devoured Twinkies for 34 years.
A24 is preserving some of the nonprofit programs known as Cherry Lane Alternative, including a playwright mentoring program. And Rait said ticket prices will vary by show, but that 'we're really cognizant of having accessible, not-too-expensive tickets.'
Cherry Lane, at 38 Commerce Street, has a long history — it was built in 1836 as a brewery, and in the years since has been a box factory and a gay bar. It has been used for theater since 1924; an adolescent Barbra Streisand had a backstage job there in the 1950s, and she has recorded an audio message welcoming patrons to the reopened theater. Among the theater's other past highlights: Alex Edelman's 'Just For Us' and Nick Kroll and John Mulaney's 'Oh, Hello!', both of which later transferred to Broadway.
A24 purchased Cherry Lane in 2023 for $10 million in a partnership with Taurus Investment Holdings. According to a March filing with the New York City Department of Buildings, the company expected to spend $2.3 million renovating the building.
The theater is part of the Greenwich Village Historic District, and its exterior has been preserved, along with the signature red doors. Inside, a space previously used as a black box theater and rehearsal area has been converted into the restaurant, with a titanium bar top and green-upholstered booths; there are also a new concession area for food and merchandise in the lobby and additional bathroom facilities.
But otherwise, the changes are mostly aesthetic and technological — new lighting and sound systems; new seats and spiffy new carpeting; projection equipment and a retractable movie screen; upgraded dressing rooms; wall curtains for when the auditorium is used in 'cinema mode.' (Rait said she expected occasionally, but not exclusively, to screen A24 films.)
The company is not requiring the theater to program work by artists who make films or television programs with A24, and is not looking to the theater to develop stories for film or television adaptation, although both of those things are likely to happen from time to time. And the company is not planning to use the theater for film premieres — it's too small — although there could be special events with film tie-ins.
A24 executives have made a practice of not talking to reporters on the record, but a company official, speaking on background, said that the studio had been considering the possibility of a live performance venture for about a year before Cherry Lane came on the market. The company, which is headquartered in New York and has distributed or produced more than 200 films and television shows in the 13 years since its founding, had already expanded from film into television, following the interests of its artists, and thought a physical space might have similar appeal, both for film and television artists interested in live storytelling, and for A24 fans looking for new ways to connect to the brand. (The company already has a membership program, backs a beauty brand and has partnered with a talent management company.)
The official said the company is not expecting to make significant money at Cherry Lane, given the small seating capacity, but that it would like the venture to become self-supporting over time.
'We're first and foremost trying to make this a live destination in New York, and have the space be where people come to enjoy great live performance,' Rait said. 'There's an opportunity for this to be a discovery hub for A24, and our ecosystem of artists that have worked with A24 is really excited about this endeavor, but it really stands on its own and is its own thing.'