A24, the Indie Film Studio, Buys New York’s Cherry Lane Theater

A24, the impartial movie and tv studio barreling into subsequent weekend’s Academy Awards with a boatload of Oscar nominations, is making an surprising transfer into dwell efficiency, buying a small Off Broadway theater in New York’s West Village.

The studio, which till now has centered on making films, tv reveals and podcasts, has bought the Cherry Lane Theater for $10 million, and plans to current performs in addition to different types of dwell leisure there, along with the occasional movie screening.

A24, whose movies embody the main Oscar contender “Every thing All over the place All At As soon as,” just isn’t the primary movie studio to make such a transfer: the Walt Disney Firm has been presenting stage productions at Broadway’s New Amsterdam Theater, which it leases from the state and metropolis, since 1997. However Disney, after all, is an leisure trade behemoth that has mastered the artwork of multiplatform storytelling.

A extra comparable transfer, maybe, was that by Audible, an Amazon audio subsidiary that since 2018 has been leasing the Minetta Lane Theater, in Greenwich Village, for dwell productions which it then data and provides on its digital platform. And Netflix, the streaming juggernaut, has lately taken over a number of cinemas, together with the Paris Theater in New York, in addition to the Egyptian and Bay theaters in Los Angeles.

The A24 acquisition, coming at time when many theaters are nonetheless struggling to rebound from the coronavirus pandemic, suggests a vote of confidence in dwell efficiency. A24 plans to current some occasions celebrating Cherry Lane’s centennial this spring, after which to shut the theater for renovations earlier than starting full-scale programming subsequent yr.

A lot stays unsure about how the corporate intends to make use of the theater. A24 declined to make anybody out there to talk on the report in regards to the acquisition, however an official there stated that the corporate had not but determined whether or not it could develop work for the stage, or current work developed by others. The official, who was granted anonymity to explain the corporate’s plans, stated that the studio hoped the theater would permit it to strengthen current relationships with writers and performers who work on stage and display, and to develop new relationships with comedians and theater artists.

A24 plans to retain the theater’s current workers whereas including to it with its personal group, the official stated, and as a part of the renovation it plans to put in expertise so the theater can be utilized for movie screenings.

The official stated A24’s theater enterprise is a partnership with Taurus Funding Holdings.

“I actually consider my theater goes into the proper fingers,” stated Angelina Fiordellisi, who has owned the theater since 1996. “They like to develop and produce the work of rising writers, and numerous their writers are playwrights. I can’t think about a greater strategy to deliver future life to the theater.”

Fiordellisi, 68, has been attempting to promote the theater for a while. “I don’t need to work that tough anymore,” she stated, “and I need to spend extra time with my household.”

The acquisition, which was beforehand reported by Curbed, contains three connected properties, together with a 179-seat theater, a 60-seat theater and eight flats, on the Village’s picturesque, curving Commerce Avenue. The Cherry Lane, in a nineteenth century constructing that was a brewery and a field manufacturing unit earlier than being transformed to theatrical use in 1923, payments itself as town’s longest frequently working Off Broadway theater.

In 2021, Fiordellisi agreed to promote the property to the Lucille Lortel Theater for $11 million, however the sale fell aside. Final week, Lortel introduced that it had spent $5.3 million to buy a three-story carriage home in Chelsea, the place it plans to open a 61-seat theater in 2025. The Lortel group additionally has a 295-seat theater within the West Village.

The Cherry Lane will now be a for-profit, business enterprise; Fiordellisi had operated it via a nonprofit, sometimes presenting work that she developed and extra typically renting it to nonprofit and business producers. Fiordellisi stated she’s going to convert her nonprofit to a basis that can give grants to playwrights and small theater corporations.