{"id":910515,"date":"2026-09-26T15:26:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-26T15:26:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/910515\/"},"modified":"2026-09-26T15:26:11","modified_gmt":"2026-09-26T15:26:11","slug":"kane-parsons-reflects-on-whirlwind-box-office-summer-post-backrooms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/910515\/","title":{"rendered":"Kane Parsons Reflects on Whirlwind Box Office Summer Post-‘Backrooms’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tTwenty-one-year-old Kane Parsons<\/a> is reflecting on a whirlwind summer in which the box office was undoubtedly bolstered by the release of his feature debut, Backrooms<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tSpeaking with some of the industry\u2019s top executives at the Zurich Film Festival<\/a> Summit on Saturday afternoon, the young director spoke about the health of the 2026 box office, which has catapulted YouTube<\/a> natives Parsons and Obsession\u2018s Curry Barker to the top of Hollywood.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a session titled \u201cThe Theatrical Box Office Resurgence! How to Get Audiences\u2019 Attention in the Era of Social Media and Online Platforms?\u201d, Backrooms filmmaker Kane Parsons was joined by Academy CEO Bill Kramer<\/a>, President and chief content officer at Mattel, Robbie Brenner and co-president at Sony Pictures Classics, Michael Barker.<\/p>\n

\n\tParsons actually confessed he doesn\u2019t think of A24\u2019s Backrooms, starring Renate Reinsve and Chiwetel Ejiofor, as a traditional horror film. \u201cI didn\u2019t direct it like a horror film. I don\u2019t view it as a horror project. I think that\u2019s just naturally the path of least resistance from a marketing perspective, and it\u2019s what seems comfortable to people as a framing device,\u201d he said. \u201cBut I\u2019m going to try to stay as oblivious to those labels as possible, and just focus on [what] think I have greater control now with future projects, so those sort of structures [should] probably be a little less forceful, I think.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe also explained, when asked about how A24 tried to sculpt the marketing and distribution plan for the film, that he believed there wasn\u2019t \u201ca real sense of what it would be prior to the actual release of the film. [\u2026] I don\u2019t think there [was] a feeling for what this would really be tapping into with people [\u2026],\u00a0all these people who were familiar with [Parsons\u2019 YouTube series] the Backrooms for years in some vague way. Suddenly, as soon as a trailer [came] out, it just activated a desire to see: \u2018How did Hollywood mess this up?’\u201d he remembers. \u201cOr it [was] just a curiosity at the very least. And I like to think we did the core idea that they were familiar with justice.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tJustice might be an understatement \u2014\u00a0the film went on to generate an eye-watering $401 million at the global box office upon its May release. During the panel in Zurich, Backrooms\u2018 success was cited as a prime example of a younger generation\u2019s desire to go to the movies.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThere\u2019s an appetite,\u201d said Parsons, \u201c[of] Backrooms being a pre-existing but decentralized IP presence online. I think people are just looking for that newness, [a] detachment from more cyclical cultural icons that keep eating themselves,\u201d he said about Hollywood\u2019s tendency to churn out projects rooted in overworked IP.<\/p>\n

\n\tKramer chimed in to say that he didn\u2019t realise YouTube and movie-going were so well-connected, \u201cin a way that I don\u2019t think we thought was possible. That for me was a big takeaway of this summer,\u201d continued the AMPAS CEO, \u201cand it gives me great hope for the film industry because [\u2026] we\u2019re seeing young people come back to the movies, and that\u2019s really key.\u201d He explained: \u201cMore than half of our ticket buyers [at the Academy Museum] are under the age of 40, and we sell out every screen. So people love seeing movies in movie theaters. We just needed to attract new fans, and you helped do that, this summer,\u201d Kramer said to Parsons.<\/p>\n

\n\tParsons concurred. \u201cI think the notion that people around my age gravitate towards short-form material is\u2026,\u201d said Parsons, before Kramer added: \u201cReductive.\u201d The young director agreed. \u201cYeah, it\u2019s reductive. I hear that come up a fair bit. [It might be] statistically truthful, but I feel like the sentiment is more that [short-form content] is weaponized, algorithmically incentivized, and it\u2019s not really something I think most people enjoy about their own wiring. They don\u2019t love that their attention spans are being sucked into the spiral of mostly consuming stuff that is that short.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBackrooms follows therapist Dr. Mary Kline (Reinsve), who enters an alternate dimension after her patient disappears inside it. The film adapts Parsons\u2019 viral YouTube series, which he launched as a teenager.<\/p>\n

\n\tHowever, Parsons was understandably coy about the prospect of a sequel on Saturday, simply telling Zurich: \u201cWe\u2019ll see.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe 22nd Zurich Film Festival runs Sept. 24-Oct. 4.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Twenty-one-year-old Kane Parsons is reflecting on a whirlwind summer in which the box office was undoubtedly bolstered by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":910516,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[199186,49,48,75,77,199187,337,4718,314420,49094],"class_list":["post-910515","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-backrooms","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-international","tag-kane-parsons","tag-movies","tag-youtube","tag-zurich-2026","tag-zurich-film-festival"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/910515","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=910515"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/910515\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/910516"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=910515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=910515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=910515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}