In its first year of business, producer-financier Topic Studios struck gold with best picture winner Spotlight. A decade later, they were back at the Academy Awards with A Real Pain, Jesse Eisenberg’s little movie that could.

That film ran the awards race for over a year, starting with a standing ovation at the Sundance Film Festival (notable because American audiences, unlike the French, prefer to keep their seats) and culminating in a supporting actor Oscar win for Kieran Culkin.

It was a proof-of-concept moment for Topic, which spent the past 10 years establishing itself as a go-to stop for filmmakers with films like Spencer and Theater Camp. After nearly every distributor passed on A Real Pain, Topic chose to solely finance the feature, eventually selling it to Searchlight Pictures out of Park City.

“It was such a beautiful story. The script was incredible but despite that, there were a lot...