The two biggest movies in America right now, “Backrooms” and “Obsession,” come from 20-something filmmakers who honed their craft on YouTube.
His films were made on relatively low budgets and promoted online. Now that they’re filling movie theaters with teenagers and young adults who rarely go to the movies, all of Hollywood is paying attention, and experts predict that studios will copy this model of film production many times over.
“Obsession,” directed by 26-year-old Curry Barker, opened in theaters on May 15. Filmed for approximately $750,000, the darkly humorous horror film has grossed nearly $150 million to date, a staggering return on investment for Focus Features and Blumhouse Productions.
Then came “Backrooms,” directed by 20-year-old Kane Parsons, who developed the project for years on his YouTube channel.
Parsons had a bigger budget — around $10 million — and famous actors like Chiwetel Ejiofor, Renate Reinsve and Mark Duplass. But it was still surprising to see “Backrooms” dominate the box office so strongly in its opening weekend.
The psychological horror film took first place at the weekend box office, grossing around $80 million in North America and $120 million worldwide, with ticket sales boosted by Generation Z.
Studio A24, which has been working to promote young directors, said Parsons now holds the position of youngest director in Hollywood history to release a film that finished No. 1 at the weekend box office.
“Obsession” was No. 2 for the weekend, pushing “Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu,” which premiered a week earlier, to No. 3.
For most movies, opening weekend is the most lucrative, with ticket sales declining from there. But “Obsession” continues to grow: Focus Features said Sunday that, “excluding Christmas, ‘Obsession’ is the first film since 1982 to increase its box office gross during its second and third weekends.”
So what does this streak of success mean? Well, it means that young people are actually willing to buy movie tickets if they know and identify with the talent of the YouTube era.
And it means Hollywood studios will chase the success of “Obsession” and “Backrooms” by searching online video sites for the next big auteur.
It might even mean that some studio bosses will go a little deeper into original concepts rather than predictable franchises and sequels.
Duplass, who plays a scientist in “Backrooms,” said in a social media video that the two films were giving the film industry “a ray of hope.”
“We have an example of creators who are perfecting their projects, putting them online, building an audience,” he said. “And now the people who control the money are going to realize… because they see what they can achieve at the box office, you know, in the form of these two movies that are exceeding expectations.”
Producers and agents have been building a pipeline from YouTube to Hollywood for a while now. And strong ticket sales last winter for YouTuber Mark Fischbach’s self-financed film, “Iron Lung,” demonstrated the potential for success.
Still, as screenwriter Zack Stentz wrote in
The Hollywood Reporter’s Steven Zeitchik wrote that the YouTubers’ successes are “a wobble, if not the first signs of a collapse, of a legacy-driven studio system.”
This moment, Zeitchik wrote, is about much more than discovering new talent. The Alphabet-owned YouTube platform makes filmmakers famous, broadcasts their work, helps them secure brand partnerships, and gives them a huge marketing voice.
“This is a phenomenon generated, driven and controlled by creators and the largest company in the world that amplifies them,” he wrote.
Speaking at an industry conference Saturday, Warner Bros. Motion Pictures co-head Michael De Luca said filmmakers like Parsons, who “worked on ‘Backrooms’ for five years,” are “in a dialogue with their audience from the get-go. Their subscribers have a direct stake in every iteration of these projects.” Warner Bros. Discovery is the parent company of CNN.
And “by the time you get to the movie,” he said, “they’ve already had a billion test screenings.”
