This weekend sees the release of the black comedy thriller, How to Make a Killing, starring Glen Powell alongside a pretty solid ensemble cast, but you’d be forgiven if you had no idea about it. The film is being released by A24, an indie studio that caters to smaller films but can throw weight behind a project when they want to give it a bigger push at the box office (look no further than their awards season darling, Marty Supreme, which has grossed $94 million domestically and $151.8 milllion worldwide). How to Make a Killing, however, is being released in only 1,600 theaters with very little fanfare, despite having a movie-star-in-the-making in Powell. The distribution strategy put together by A24 shows a lack of faith in the film and has likely set it up to be gone before it even gets started.

Written and directed by John Patton Ford, How to Make a Killing is loosely inspired by Kind of Hearts and Coronets, a 1949 British film directed by Robert Hamer and written by John Dighton. It’s an “eat the rich” movie, which stars Powell as Becket Redfellow, a blue-collar gentleman who was disowned at birth by his very rich family. Because of this, Becket is on a mission to reclaim his inheritance, and no number of relatives will be able to stand in his way. The film also stars Margaret Qualley, Jessica Henwick, Bill Camp, Zach Woods, Topher Grace, and Ed Harris.

How to Make a Killing began its origins in 2014 when Ford’s original screenplay appeared on The Black List, which is an annual list of “most-liked” screenplays that have yet to be produced. Back then, the movie was called Rothchild, and by 2019, Jon S. Baird was on board to direct, and reportedly, Shia LaBeouf and Mel Gibson were attached to star. Things soon stalled on the project, but by 2023, Ford himself was in place to direct following the acclaim his 2022 crime thriller Emily the Criminal received when it was released. The film received even more traction when Powell was cast in 2024, around the time that his romantic comedy, Anyone But You, was becoming a sleeper as it was crossing $100 million at the worldwide box office. At this time, the film was now called Huntington, and before the movie even went before the cameras, Powell had Twisters and Hit Man on the way, with the former eventually becoming a box office hit ($267.7 million domestically and $372.2 million globally) and the latter being released to steller reviews garnering the actor a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy. Everything seemed poised for A24 to make this a mid-budgeted star vehicle for Powell that they could turn into a decent-sized hit, but something seemed to go astray along the way.

The film’s trailers have sold the movie well, and it looked like the right direction for Powell to go in as an actor to showcase that he has considerable acting chops along with movie-star gravitas, but A24 has done little to build on that. Perhaps there was no room in the marketing budget for an excessive amount of TV spots, which has made the promotion more targeted, but from this viewpoint, it seems as if it was only targeted towards cinephiles and entertainment journalists who were aware that the film was on the way this weekend, while casual moviegoers were not. It’s not as if A24 is dumping the film on a random weekend in February because they believe it’s a stinker, but it does feel like the movie has become more of an afterthought for the studio. The movie has some mainstream potential, at least to get butts in the seats on opening weekend, but A24 doesn’t seem to be trying to utilize any of it. Given reports that the film carries a much higher budget than Ford’s Emily the Criminal (made for a mere $2 million), you would think that A24 would’ve gone harder for a movie with an indie director on the rise and a star like Powell leading the charge.

A24 has been known for throwing its money behind projects they think will garner it the most attention since funds are tighter compared to the major studios, and this could be what happened with the marketing push for How to Make a Killing. In 2025, the studio had financial misfires such as Death of a Unicorn ($16.4 million gross on a $15 million budget) and, most notably, the Dwayne Johnson vehicle, The Smashing Machine ($21.1 million final gross on a $50 million budget). Their fortunes changed with the release of Marty Supreme, starring Timothée Chalamet, which has gone on to become their highest-grossing film and a much-needed hit given its $70 million budget. While the dollar amount for the film’s awards season campaign hasn’t been disclosed, it’s clear that A24 put muscle behind it, and it paid off with a stellar amount of awards attention, including Academy Award nominations, with Best Picture being one of its biggest bragging rights. This is merely speculation, but if A24 decided to put all of their eggs in the Marty Supreme basket, it may have come at the expense of a film like How to Make a Killing, which now has to ride on Powell’s starpower alone. Although that has been called into question as well.

Because of his appearance in Top Gun: Maverick and turning Anyone but You into a surprise hit, Powell has been positioned as a movie star to watch. Thanks to his friendship with Tom Cruise, which has come along with public mentoring that has garnered media attention, the industry has seemed to want to make him the second coming of Tom Cruise. An actor with talent but also a considerable amount of charm that has made him one of the more likable actors working today. However, Powell’s movie star appeal wasn’t truly tested until he had to carry a vehicle essentially on his own last November. With Top Gun: Maverick, he was a part of an ensemble; with Anyone but You, he had a Sydney Sweeney assist, and with Twisters, the disaster film special effects served as one of his co-stars. With The Running Man, Powell was the name above the title, and it didn’t resonate the way many had hoped.

The Running Man was the second adaptation of Stephen King’s 1982 novel, following the 1987 film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, and, on paper, it seemed like the right movie for Powell to test the wattage of his starpower. The film was directed by Edgar Wright, who, while not a director known for huge box office, is respected by the industry and movie fans alike. It also had some IP recognition, even if it wasn’t the biggest of the IPs from the 80s, which Paramount Pictures hoped would generate some interest. The final result was a movie released to mixed reviews and less-than-stellar box office ($68.6 million worldwide on a budget of $110 million). Suddenly, the headlines went from, Is Powell our next big movie star to did we give him that title far too soon. With his next film being How to Make a Killing, on his roster, did A24 get cold feet putting significant push into its release after seeing the performance of The Running Man? Again, it’s all pure speculation, but interesting to consider when there doesn’t seem to be any real buzz around the film’s release whatsoever.

A24 didn’t go the film festival route with the movie, despite Ford’s previous film, Emily the Criminal, debuting at the 38th Sundance Film Festival. A festival launch, particularly a high-profile one, is the kind of organic marketing that could’ve generated more buzz for How to Make a Killing, but maybe the studio realized the film wasn’t strong enough for that kind of launch. Surprisingly, the reviews for the film represent another mixed outing for Powell, currently sitting with a 59 percent on Rotten Tomatoes with 60 reviews counted so far. Once again, Powell is receiving solid reviews for his performance, but the film itself, in some of the more harsh reviews, is being called out for not fully embracing its black comedy sensibilities and is being called dull and a mess by others. That’s not to say all reviews feel that way, as some have made it clear this is the direction Powell needs to go in, while others have called it darkly funny as a whole. Sadly, however, we live in a moviegoing space where casual moviegoers will see a rotten score on the aggregator site and will give it a pass, at least until it’s able to be watched at home.

This also isn’t a pointed dig at Powell or his movie. This is just to show how sometimes A24 picks and chooses where to put its focus. It is almost guaranteed, for example, that the marketing push they engage in for The Drama, starring Zendaya and Robert Pattinson, will be far stronger than the one put forth for How to Make a Killing. That film, not released until April 3, does have more potential for mainstream appeal given its leads and its premise, so A24 will no doubt pump more money into its marketing campaign, which has already consisted of two trailers and a fun advertisement in The Boston Globe which saw the studio asking the publicaiton to hold their daily TV Critic’s Corner column so they could run an ad next to the newspaper’s romance advice column to promoate the movie with a mock engagement announcement for the fictional characters portrayed by Zendaya and Pattinson that also included plot details. How to Make a Killing didn’t receive nearly as much attention from the studio, and that’s a fact that has become glaringly obvious as the film is set to open.

Whatever the case may be, A24 has a movie that is tracking to gross in the low single digits this weekend, which will lead to its time in theaters being a very brief one. Even if reviews weren’t going to be totally up to par or if A24 decided to put its money elsewhere, it seems like a shame that the studio didn’t put just a little more effort into the film’s marketing campaign with someone like Powell leading their film. Box office isn’t the full measure of a film’s success, but it is disappointing when more isn’t done to ensure that a movie COULD be successful. How to Make a Killing seemed to have the ingredients to have been a mid-sized performer for A24, but now it will head into this weekend, doomed to fail before it even began.

How to Make a Killing opens in theaters this Friday.