Neon Catapults Its Second Cannes Palme d’Or Winner To An Oscar Best Picture Win With ‘Anora’​on March 3, 2025 at 4:02 am

After taking home five Palme d’Or trophies in a row at the Cannes Film Festival, Neon has translated its second Croisette top prize, Anora, to an Oscar Best Picture win.

The last time this happened for the Tom Quinn-founded and -run studio was when 2019 Palme d’Or winner Parasite went on to an Oscar Best Picture win in pre-Covid 2020.

Anora won a total of five Oscars on Sunday including Best Film Editing, Best Original Screenplay and Best Director all for filmmaker Sean Baker, as well as a surprise win for Best Actress, Mikey Madison who played the title character.

That’s one more than the sum Oscar total of Parasite, which won four Oscars: In addition to Best Picture, it took home Director and Original Screenplay for Bong Joon Ho as well as Best International Feature Film.

Anora cost $6 million and Neon acquired the movie in November 2023. It remains Baker’s highest-grossing movie ever in his career with $15.6M at the domestic box office and close to $41M worldwide.

Among its tear this awards season, Anora won Best Picture at Critics Choice, DGA for Baker, the top prize at the PGAs and original screenplay at the WGAs.

Since the movie’s rally at Cannes where the sex-worker comedy won the top prize, Baker has rallied for moviegoing, and is a true patriot to the cinema-making artform.

In addition to making waves at the Oscars and Cannes, Neon has been making a name of late for itself in the genre space with Oz Perkins’ Longlegs last summer, which ranks as the distributor’s highest opening ($22.4M domestic) and overall grossing title ($74.3M stateside and $126.9M worldwide).

Recently, Neon opened its second movie with Perkins, The Monkey, based on the Stephen King short story, to $14M. The movie currently counts $24.5M stateside and $31.2M global.