{"id":692479,"date":"2025-09-28T17:35:11","date_gmt":"2025-09-28T14:35:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/inside-tom-quinns-neon-revolution\/"},"modified":"2025-09-28T17:35:11","modified_gmt":"2025-09-28T14:35:11","slug":"inside-tom-quinns-neon-revolution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/inside-tom-quinns-neon-revolution\/","title":{"rendered":"Inside Tom Quinn\u2019s Neon Revolution"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n\tWith 39 Academy Award nominations, 11 wins, and more than $400 million at the box office in just eight years, Tom Quinn has turned Neon into one of the most disruptive forces in independent cinema. The distributor behind best picture winners Bong Joon Ho\u2019s Parasite<\/em> and Sean Baker\u2019s Anora<\/em>, as well as Oz Perkins\u2019 horror hits Longlegs<\/em> \u2014 the top indie release of 2024 with $74 million domestic \u2014 and The Monkey<\/em>, which earned nearly $40 million, has helped restore faith in the theatrical business. <\/p>\n

\n\tHonored at the Zurich Summit with this year\u2019s Game<\/a> Changer Award, Quinn sat down with CAA\u2019s Roeg Sutherland (a former Game Changer honoree) to trace an unlikely path from cataloging reels at Sam Goldwyn to building one of the premium brands in global cinema.<\/p>\n

\n\tQuinn\u2019s origin story doubles as a primer in entrepreneurial training. \u201cI\u2019ve been doing this for 30 years\u2014it\u2019s gone by so quickly,\u201d he said, noting he\u2019s worked on \u201csomething over 400\u201d films in his career, from his Neon titles back through the decades previously at the Sam Goldwyn Company, Mark Cuban\u2019s Magnolia Pictures, and at The Weinstein Company\u2019s label Radius.<\/p>\n

\n\tGoldwyn for Quinn was film school and boot camp: He cataloged archives, ran a projection booth, and cycled through development, production and acquisitions. \u201cSeven and a half years there gave me a pathway: I wanted more control over the movies<\/a> we buy, in service of how they\u2019re marketed and publicized.\u201d Magnolia, under Cuban, became the proving ground. \u201cCuban essentially gave me free rein to go buy 40 movies a year\u2026 there was no censorship, just operating within a financial model.\u201d Doing all his own modeling, negotiating, and pitching, \u201cas executives we were cross-trained,\u201d he said, shaped Quinn app<\/a>roach to the business.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe leap from executive to founder began with a nudge from friend, and future business partner, Jason Janego: To stop \u201cplaying amateur ball\u201d and go pro. The result was Radius, a boutique label at The Weinstein Company, that embraced simultaneous VOD releases at a time when that was still taboo. Snowpiercer, <\/em>Quinn\u2019s first collaboration with Bong Joon Ho, provided proof of concept. The film grossed $4.5 million in theaters despite having a simultaneous VOD release. David Robert Mitchell\u2019s horror breakout It Follows <\/em>became a case study in adaptive windowing. \u201cThe plan was: We take it theatrical in 20 markets, with no announced VOD window, and let the audience decide the next window,\u201d Quinn said. \u201cThe Thursday night at the Arclight [in L.A.] did $6,000; that told us it should be a wide release. We canceled the VOD window and went wide.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\t\t\t\t\tJake Weary and Maika Monroe in \u2018It Follows.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tRADiUS-TWC\/Courtesy Everett Collection<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tQuinn and Janego left Weinstein in 2015 to \u201craise money for a company that would right the wrongs of previous places I\u2019d worked, built on better business practices,\u201d said Quinn. \u201cWhere we would only work on films we could sell with a straight face, that we truly believed in 100 percent.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIt turned out to be a big ask. It took two years to raise the start-up capital. Quinn credits Sutherland with helping secure Neon\u2019s first backer, SR Media<\/a>, which put in $15 million. Janego ultimately stepped away from the company before Neon launched in 2017.<\/p>\n

\n\tThose first years were scrappy, partly by design. \u201cIt was six people inside a WeWork\u2014basically like a chef on a cook line,\u201d Quinn recalled. An early success was Matt Spicer\u2019s dark comedy Ingrid Goes West<\/em> (acquired via CAA). Margot Robbie took note of Neon\u2019s campaign for the film, which earned a respectable $3 million. When Robbie\u2019s I, Tonya<\/em> came to market, Neon was among the bidders.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cBy then, we were maybe 15 people, and we had just enough money to buy I, Tonya<\/em>,\u201d Quinn said. Neon \u201cplunked down $6 million,\u201d and got the movie, despite a deep-pocketed bid by Netflix (\u201cwho came in with three times our offer\u201d). <\/p>\n

\n\tTwo weeks later, Neon launched the film\u2019s Oscar campaign, coaching I, Tonya<\/em> to a $30 million domestic release and 3 Academy Award nominations (with a best supporting actress win for Allison Janney). \u201cEverything changed after that,\u201d said Winn. \u201cFilmmakers started looking and saying, \u2018Theatrical is not dead. Look at what you can do when you do it right.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

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\t\t\t\t\t\u2018I, Tonya,\u2019 Margot Robbie as Tonya Harding<\/span><\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t30West\/Courtesy Everett Collection<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tFrom there, Neon\u2019s brand cohered around curatorial conviction and the art of marketing. For Parasite<\/em>, Neon\u2019s trailer foregrounded the film\u2019s only two lines of English \u201cwe put them front and center in the trailer to give audiences comfort,\u201d said Quinn. For Justine Triet\u2019s Anatomy of a Fall<\/em>, Neon\u2019s hook wasn\u2019t the courtroom drama \u2014 a large portion of the film\u00a0\u2014 but a whodunit prompt: \u201cDid she do it?\u201d which \u201caimed higher than what a film like this would traditionally gross.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tNeon\u2019s in-house ethos, said Quinn, is a form of non-groupthink. When Jason Wald, VP of production, pitched him on Longlegs<\/em> with a two-minute clip, his instinct was to give the film a hard no. \u201cI said: \u2018You\u2019ve got to be kidding\u2014we\u2019re not doing this.’\u201d But Wald convinced him. \u201cWhen Oz [Perkins] delivered the movie, I thought: I get it! This is a beautifully-made horror film.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Longlegs<\/em> campaign is part of the Neon legend. Their underground campaign ditched the standard teaser, trailer, poster and TV spots approach for a single cryptic billboard, a mysterious telephone number, and a trail of online breadcrumbs to entice fans to figure out the mystery of the film.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe saw, day to day, the interaction and validation across materials and world-building,\u201d said Quinn. \u201cThe marketing isn\u2019t simply selling the film, it\u2019s additive; its own artifact. It was fun and very effective.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tLonglegs<\/em> opened at number 2 at the U.S. box office, behind only Despicable Me 4<\/em> in its sophomore frame, grossing $22.4 million. It went on to earn $74 million and is still Neon\u2019s all-time box office champ.<\/p>\n

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\t\t\t\t\tNicolas Cage in Neon\u2019s \u2018Longlegs\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tNeon\/Courtesy Everett Collection<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tBut Neon has remained true to its arthouse roots. Quinn paid $1.6 million for North American rights to C\u00e9line Sciamma\u2019s Portrait of a Lady on Fire<\/em>, an unusually aggressive move for a French-language title, on personal conviction that \u201cthis was a once-in-a-lifetime movie.\u201d When Quinn and acquisitions head Jeff Deutchman read Julia Ducournau\u2019s script for Titane<\/em>, they made her an offer on the spot. The film went on to win Cannes\u2019 Palme d\u2019Or, Neon\u2019s second Palme (after Parasite<\/em>), and the start of a six-film winning streak at the world\u2019s number-one film festival, which continued this year with Jafar Panahi\u2019s It Was Just an Accident<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cBrand identity matters. Inside the company, we have painstaking discussions and we do not compromise,\u201d said Quinn. \u201cThat commitment attracts filmmakers. Not everything works, but every year we try to put out the perfect \u2018ten-film\u2019 catalog: If you like one of our movies, I think I can convince you to check out the other nine\u2014and maybe the rest of our 125-film catalog.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tQuinn addressed the widespread rumors that he\u2019s looking to sell that catalog, and all of Neon, to the highest bidder. \u201cWe\u2019re all for sale in some way,\u201d he admitted, but said, \u201ccreating a company just to exit was never my goal. The incoming interest we get is validating, it shows we\u2019re a real, sustainable business, nine years in, without taking much outside investment.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWhatever happens with Neon, this year\u2019s Zurich Summit Game Changer said he\u2019ll \u201cnever stop going into screenings and trying to buy movies\u2026My favorite thing is sending an offer during the screening and closing the deal before the credits roll. I love the sport of it. But at the end of the day, the legacy is the films, the art. C\u00e9line Sciamma said something that always stuck with me: If your art isn\u2019t political, is it actually art? That\u2019s something I firmly believe.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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With 39 Academy Award nominations, 11 wins, and more than $400 million at the box office in just eight years, Tom Quinn has turned Neon into one of the most disruptive forces in independent cinema. The distributor behind best picture winners Bong Joon Ho\u2019s Parasite and Sean Baker\u2019s Anora, as well as Oz Perkins\u2019 horror…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":692480,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/GettyImages-2208019443-H-2025.jpg?w=1296&h=730&crop=1","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[124783,26112,25023,150905,157816,144801],"class_list":["post-692479","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-social-mediaa","tag-international","tag-neon","tag-oscars","tag-tom-quinn","tag-zurich-2025","tag-zurich-film-festival"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=692479"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692479\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/692480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=692479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=692479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=692479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}