{"id":612532,"date":"2026-09-26T15:46:08","date_gmt":"2026-09-26T15:46:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/612532\/"},"modified":"2026-09-26T15:46:08","modified_gmt":"2026-09-26T15:46:08","slug":"backrooms-director-kane-parsons-distances-hit-from-horror-moniker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/612532\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Backrooms’ Director Kane Parsons Distances Hit From Horror Moniker"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tKane Parson\u2019s $400M hit Backrooms<\/a>, spinning off his web-series inspired by \u201ccreepypasta\u2019 horror content on the internet, is invariably and understandably billed as a horror.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe director told a panel at the Zurich Summit<\/a> on Saturday, however, that he does not see it as being aligned with the genre.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI didn\u2019t direct like a horror film. I don\u2019t view it as a horror project. I think that\u2019s just naturally been the path of least resistance from a marketing perspective and it\u2019s what seems comfortable to people as a framing device,\u201d he said,<\/p>\n

\n\tParsons acknowledged that A24, which spearheaded the adaptation the web-series and distributed the movie, would not like his comments, but added he hoped to be able to avoid this sort of framing in the future.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI\u2019m going to try to stay as oblivious to those labels as possible\u2026 I think I have more creative control now with future projects so those sorts of structures will probably be a little less forceful in the future,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\n\tParsons was talking on a panel on the $4.7 billion resurgence at the U.S. box office this summer, alongside Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences CEO Bill Kramer; President & Chief Content Officer Mattel Studios and Barbie producer Robbie Brenner and Sony Pictures Classics co-head Michael Barker.<\/p>\n

\n\tKramer, Brenner and Barker all acknowledged the role played by Backrooms in the box office resurgence, alongside Obsession, which was also born out of the YouTube space.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cBackrooms was an amazing example\u2026 and speaks to one of the things that\u2019s happening with our industry\u2026. your fandom travelled from YouTube to the theaters,\u201d said Kramer.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cYoung people want to go back to movie theaters. Fandoms shift. Theatrical can inform a fandom. YouTube can inform a theatrical fandom. It\u2019s all connected in a way that I don\u2019t think we thought was possible, and that for me was a big takeaway of this summer, and it gives me great hope for the film industry.<\/p>\n

\n\tBarker described the box office success for Backrooms as symptomatic of a wider shift for the film business.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIf you look at the history of the motion picture business, there are these major inflection moments of transition. When I was 15 years old, Easy Rider came out in the middle of the Vietnam War, in the middle of a right-wing president, that spoke volumes to people in the moment. It spoke to young people, and they responded in huge numbers, and it affected the movies that were going to be made afterwards,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI think this is that moment this summer with Obsession and Backrooms. What we haven\u2019t talked about is what is in those movies that speaks to the population in the moment, and some of it\u2019s very scary stuff\u2026 we\u2019re in that moment for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBarker suggested the box offices was also being impacted by a phenomenon set in motion by the pandemic and the rise of the platforms, which has resulted in audiences in their teens, 20s and 30s being exposed to wider cinema content.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kane Parson\u2019s $400M hit Backrooms, spinning off his web-series inspired by \u201ccreepypasta\u2019 horror content on the internet, is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":612533,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[164886,156,409,111,139,69,40858],"class_list":["post-612532","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-backrooms","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-zurich-summit"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612532","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=612532"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612532\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/612533"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=612532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=612532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=612532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}