AUTEURS, INC.

A24 is brilliant at selling small, provocative films. Now it wants to sell blockbusters, too.

- ALEX BARASCH

In November of 2015, the upstart film studio A24 had a problem. Executives had acquired the writer-director Robert Eggers's stark, unsettling début, “The Witch,” at the Sundance Film Festival and wanted to make it their first release to open on thousands of screens. But both Eggers and Anya Taylor-Joy, who starred as a teenager tempted by unholy forces, were then unknown. The story, set in the sixteen-thirties and scripted in Early Modern English, was a tough sell. To generate buzz, the company sought an unlikely partner: the Satanic Temple.

A24’s marketing team had noticed that the organization, which mounts protests in support of religious freedom and reproductive rights, had a knack for headline-grabbing stunts. They reached out to Jex Blackmore, the Temple’s spokesperson at the time, who agreed to a meeting after watching “The Witch” and finding it “pretty disturbing, in a wonderful way.” The studio flew Blackmore from Detroit to Manhattan to talk with executives, among them David Fenkel, one of A24’s founders, who proved surprisingly receptive to ideas about the “philosophy behind satanism and witchcraft.”

The Satanic Temple publicly endorsed the movie—a first for the order—and A24 bankrolled “interactive performances” to follow preview screenings. Blackmore drew up a document enshrining their shared goal: “Create a narrative and controversy that transforms ‘The Witch’ into an iconic film.” The satanists planned the parties; A24 minded the guest list, and canvassed butchers in search of a pig’s head, for ritual use. At a post-screening event at the Jane Hotel, in New York, attendees had their foreheads marked with ash, then mingled with nearly nude performers, a theremin player, and a dominatrix. Blackmore said, “People watch a film, and then they expect to go to some Hollywood party. I wanted to really distort that experience.”