TONY HITS 94 PERCENT WITH CRITICS AS SESSA CARRIES A24

Matt Johnson sat down with Dominic Sessa for Men's Health and said the quiet part out loud. "When I'm making any of my movies, I want everybody on camera to be the best possible versions of themselves." That is not a marketing line. It is the operating philosophy behind Tony, A24's Anthony Bourdain biopic, and it is a stranger sentence than it sounds coming from a studio that usually says nothing at all.

Tony opened in six theaters across New York and Los Angeles on August 7 and expands wide on August 21. Sessa plays a nineteen year old Bourdain arriving in Provincetown for the summer that becomes Kitchen Confidential, the 2000 memoir the film adapts. Emilia Jones, Antonio Banderas, Leo Woodall, Stavros Halkias, Dagmara Dominczyk and Rich Somer round out the kitchen. The photo that ran with Johnson's quote was shot by rona liana, and it is doing more work than a normal press still because a studio with 87 Oscar nominations and 21 wins on less than one percent of Hollywood's output rarely lets a director explain himself this plainly.

94 Percent, 48 Reviews, One Wide Release

Tony debuted at a perfect 100 percent on Rotten Tomatoes when the review embargo lifted July 29 and has since settled at 94 percent across 48 critic reviews. That is a rare number for a biopic, a genre critics usually punish for hagiography, and it moved only 6 points as more critics filed reviews ahead of the wide release. It also means Johnson's line about camera ready authenticity is not just craft talk. It is the thesis critics are agreeing with in print, forty eight times over, ten days before the wide release even lands.

Sessa Plays Bourdain At Nineteen

Sessa broke out in The Holdovers and Tony is the first time he has carried a film as its center. The role asks him to play Bourdain before the chef, the author or the CNN host existed, a line cook who has not decided what he is going to become. Saint Laurent put Sessa in its Fall 2024 campaign on the strength of that first performance, which means the actor A24 is now leaning on to sell a food world coming of age story is also the face fashion picked to sell restraint. Emilia Jones carries her own awards pedigree into the same kitchen. She starred in CODA, the film that won Best Picture in 2022 for a rival studio, which makes Tony's cast a group A24 assembled specifically for people who already know what an awards campaign looks like from the inside.

Silence Does Not Win Oscars

A24 posted the date 06.29.1990 on June 29, 2026 with a single image and no caption, marking an unexplained anniversary with zero context. When Backrooms: Everything Must Go got 16 minutes of new footage and a nationwide theatrical rerelease last month, the pitch was nearly identical: no sit downs, just a runtime and a date. FO has already flagged this as A24's core brand strategy, generating attention without a traditional press cycle. A director sitting across from his own lead actor at Men's Health, naming exactly what he wants out of a performance, breaks that pattern on purpose, and it only happens when the studio needs critics and voters to hear the reasoning, not just see the poster.

Forget The Mystery Post. Read The Quote.

That Oscar math, 21 wins on less than one percent of Hollywood's annual output, is a ratio no other studio touches, and every one of those wins needed a campaign built on more than a cryptic post. Tony is a biopic of a real person with a devoted audience and a wide release date already locked for August 21. That combination is exactly when A24 has historically switched from silence to sit downs, because Oscar voters do not vote on mystery. They vote on the director explaining his choices in print, and on critics who already went on record at 94 percent across 48 reviews before a single wide release ticket sold.

Ninety four percent across 48 reviews, a wide release ten days out, and a director on record about wanting his actors at their most honest. Tony is the biopic that convinced A24 to talk, and Matt Johnson just told Men's Health exactly what he is chasing when the cameras roll.