Young YouTube Creator Breaks Box Office Records with Backrooms Horror Film

From Internet Creepypasta to Hollywood Blockbuster

A 20-year-old filmmaker has shattered entertainment industry records with a horror movie that began as anonymous posts on an internet message board. Kane Parsons' "Backrooms" has already shattered the record for A24's best opening weekend, with his $10 million adaptation of his viral YouTube short film series landing the biggest opening in A24 history, with a little over $81 million. The move makes Parsons, 20, the youngest filmmaker in history to top the domestic box office, smashing the record set in 2012 by Josh Trank, who was 27 when his found footage superhero movie Chronicle opened to No. 1.

The Backrooms horror legend began as an anonymous 4chan post in 2019, when The Backrooms were a fictional location invented in a 2019 thread on the imageboard website 4chan. Another anonymous user replied with a short piece of lore: "If you're not careful and you noclip out of reality in the wrong areas, you'll end up in The Backrooms, where it's nothing but the stink of old moist carpet, the madness of mono-yellow, the endless background noise of fluorescent lights at maximum hum-buzz."

Kane Parsons was 14 when he first encountered the original Backrooms image, and Parsons uploaded the video in January 2022, intending it as a standalone work and not expecting much reaction. But the 9-minute video went from one million to seven million views within 48 hours. The wider web series has accumulated almost 200 million views across its episodes.

Breaking Industry Barriers and Records

That's more than triple the previous record holder, Alex Garland's thriller "Civil War," which earned $25.5 million in 2024 to claim the title of A24's best debut. Not only is that far and away a record first day and opening weekend for A24, but people, these are higher numbers than Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu last weekend ($33.7M first day, $81.6M 3-day), and that's mega IP fired up by a Disney near $100M P&A 360-degree domestic campaign.

Screen Engine/Rentrak exits show a massive turnout by the 18-24 bunch at 43%. The 18-34 combined was 76%. What's jaw-dropping about Backrooms is that their campaign is laser-focused and finely curated to its fans, native to the internet with a spend in the ballpark of Neon's Longlegs (which was under $10M, though Backrooms is a bit higher I understand).

Co-financed and produced by Chernin Entertainment, Backrooms focuses on a failed architect (Chiwetel Ejiofor), who stumbles across an endless series of rooms in the furniture store he manages. Its producer credits include filmmaker Shawn Levy and horror maven James Wan, and stars Oscar nominees Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve.

The YouTube-to-Hollywood Pipeline

After his first video went viral, studios came calling. The film was officially greenlit by A24 in 2025 – making Parsons the youngest director in the studio's history. But it is only now that we are starting to see directors like Parsons emerge from that DIY landscape to become big-time filmmakers. Though Parsons is new to Hollywood, he is by no means new to the world of horror, and "Backrooms" will likely be watched closely by the rest of the industry to see if the Creatorverse becomes the New Hollywood of the 21st century.

Parsons is not the only young YouTube creator to make waves at the box office this weekend. Obsession, the horror from newcomer Curry Barker, 26, came in at second place under Backrooms. YouTubers Danny and Michael Philippou previously worked with A24 on Talk to Me in 2023 and with Sony on Bring Her Back in 2025. Gaming YouTuber Mark Fishbach, aka Markiplier, made his directorial debut this year with Iron Lung, which now holds the record for the most fake blood used in a single movie.

Cultural Impact and Future Implications

It became one of the most well-known examples of the "liminal spaces" internet aesthetic. This trend is built on photographs of transitional or in-between places that evoke a strange, unsettling sense of both familiarity and unease. The success represents more than just box office numbers—it signals a fundamental shift in how entertainment content is discovered, developed, and distributed in the digital age.

Traditional Hollywood gatekeepers are now looking to platforms like YouTube, TikTok, and even anonymous message boards for the next generation of storytellers. The film industry, long criticized for its resistance to change and reliance