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T-shirts + thongs + perfect twerking = Anora's Oscar winning gen Z campaign
The Guardian
|March 08, 2025
The extraordinary success of Sean Baker's sex worker romance at the Oscars last Sunday has left many gawping at the campaigning nous of the indie distributor Neon, which released the film in the US.
Five years ago, it propelled another Palme d'Or winner at the Cannes film festival, Bong Joon-ho's Parasite, to an Oscars landslide. The price tag on that victory, as well as all the marketing and press tours costs for the film, was $20m (£15.5m).
Neon brought in the final bill for Anora at $18m - which is nonetheless three times its budget. Neon's strategy, explained its chief executive Tom Quinn to Variety, was to lean into its gen Z and homemade appeal, rather than to traditional critics and tastemakers.
This story is from the March 08, 2025 edition of The Guardian.
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