Internet culture is showing up in a big way in theaters, as low-budget horror films \u201cBackrooms\u201d and \u201cObsession\u201d led this weekend\u2019s box office and beat out big franchise films like \u201cStar Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu.\u201d<\/p>\n
A24\u2019s \u201cBackrooms\u201d topped the charts with $81.5 million in the U.S. and Canada in its opening weekend, according to studio estimates. The film is directed by 20-year-old YouTuber Kane Parsons, who based it on his internet series of the same name.<\/p>\n
\u201cBackrooms,\u201d which reportedly had a production budget of about $10 million, stars Chiwetel Ejiofor as a furniture store owner who finds a mysterious portal in his basement. The film made a total of $118 million worldwide.<\/p>\n
In second place was Focus Features\u2019 \u201cObsession,\u201d which hauled in $26.4 million in its third weekend in theaters, up 10% from the previous weekend\u2019s total. The film, which had a production budget of less than $1 million, has now grossed $104.7 million domestically for a global total of $148 million. <\/p>\n
\u201cObsession\u201d director Curry Barker is also known for his YouTube sketch comedy channel. <\/p>\n
The success of two YouTube-native filmmakers at the box office indicates the growing power of the platform \u2014 and online culture as a whole \u2014 in attracting audiences to cinemas.<\/p>\n
Walt Disney Co. and Lucasfilm\u2019s \u201cThe Mandalorian and Grogu\u201d fell to third place this weekend with a domestic gross of $25 million. Lionsgate\u2019s musical biopic \u201cMichael\u201d ($11.7 million) and Sony Pictures\u2019 family comedy \u201cThe Breadwinner\u201d ($7.5 million) rounded out the top five at the box office, according to Comscore data.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Internet culture is showing up in a big way in theaters, as low-budget horror films \u201cBackrooms\u201d and \u201cObsession\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":454622,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[164886,231286,5784,9719,156,593,66347,28176,208314,409,231288,111,139,69,6300,231287,20936,3940,42009,4767],"class_list":["post-454621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-backrooms","tag-beat-star-wars","tag-box-office","tag-cinema","tag-entertainment","tag-film","tag-grogu","tag-internet-culture","tag-mandalorian","tag-movies","tag-musical-biopic","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-obsession","tag-production-budget","tag-theater","tag-total","tag-walt-disney-co","tag-weekend"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454621","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=454621"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454621\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/454622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=454621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=454621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=454621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}