A24’s marketing team had noticed that the organization, which mounts protests in support of religious freedom and reproductive rights, had a knack for headline-grabbing stunts. They reached out to Jex Blackmore, the Temple’s spokesperson at the time, who agreed to a meeting after watching “The Witch” and finding it “pretty disturbing, in a wonderful way.” The studio flew Blackmore from Detroit to Manhattan to talk with executives, among them David Fenkel, one of A24’s founders, who proved surprisingly receptive to ideas about the “philosophy behind satanism and witchcraft.”journey-inline-newsletterinline-newsletter